


Walking With Fire

by SugarBabyGenji



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bestiality, Cheating, Drama, Extremely Slow Burn, Gore, Incest, Light Masochism, M/M, Magic AU, McGenji - Freeform, Mind Break, NC-17, Rape, Rough Sex, Shimadacest, Slow Burn, Torture, Violence, War, genji is a size queen, if you're in it for the shimadacest, im sorry but its going to be a while, minor widowmercy and only towards the end, the main pairing is MOSTLY shimadacest but it will have pretty solid mcgenji throughout, this is self indulgent im sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2018-12-09 04:23:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11661549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarBabyGenji/pseuds/SugarBabyGenji
Summary: (Magic!AU) Hanzo is cursed when he kills his father in cold blood, and in the process, is on the receiving end of a terrible curse. In order to save his beloved brother, Genji has to trek across the world to find someone to undo the curse, but he didn't exactly plan on getting caught up in a large scale magical war that will determine the fate of the world.





	1. Walking Into The Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will always put warning tags for the chapter here. Please do not send me hatemail if you choose to ignore this section. Updates for Walking With Fire will be irregular, I apologize. Most chapters will more than likely be longer than this one.
> 
> WARNINGS: Gore, death. This chapter is going to be considered tame.

Genji wakes up with a violent start.

The night is black and thick outside when he looks outside, thick summer storm clouds rolling in. This was not an usual occurrence, but despite his ears telling him that the castle was silent, his heart was beating furiously, and he couldn’t help but rush to put some clothes on. The night is still and silent, but the air is charged and oppressive, and it makes Genji rush even further when he cannot find his wakizashi.

The nightmare he’d had was surreal and hard to remember, as most of his were, but they were becoming more frequent and more intense. Many times he would wake up and the dreams would cling to him, wrapping his eyes up in their imagery long after he’d woken up. Although Genji could not remember the entirety of the nightmare in graphic detail, flashes of the horrors danced behind his eyelids as he nearly dumped everything out of his closet to find his beloved knife. He would not leave without it, no matter what.

He pockets a few shuriken, ignoring the flashes of ice cold hands and husky laughs from his dreams. This was not the time to try and remember, and as the clouds rolled in over head he could only become more and more desperate to find his weapon until at last, he found it, hidden under one of Hanzo’s “borrowed” hakama from the other day he’d meant to return but hadn’t.

Genji runs out the door, the sound of thunder rattling the rice screens of his room. It was quiet here too, and that made it all the worse – there were usually guards outside of his room, whether he liked it or not, and their empty posts made him all the more frantic. He would run to Hanzo’s room, he would check up on his brother and there would be no doubt that he would know what to do.

But the further he got down the hallway, the more the horror in his heart was growing. There were slash marks, growing more frequent around Hanzo’s room, and Genji yanked out one of Hanzo’s prized arrows, fletching ruined and smeared with still-wet blood, out of the wall across from Hanzo’s ajar door.

He barely took a look inside the wrecked room before Genji turned tail, sprinting. The din of the thunder grew until it drowned out the harsh pounding of Genji’s bare feet as he ran throughout the castle, frantically looking for anyone that knew what was happening. He was unsheathing his wakizashi as he sprinted into the courtyard, and that was when lighting struck from the sky as he took in the scene before him.

There was blood everywhere and arrows embedded in the walls, but there was no possible way that all of this blood could’ve come from those alone. No, it was more like a brutal massacre, where blood had been sprayed in every which direction.

That was when he saw it, and he wanted so badly to look away.

It wasn’t that Genji was unaccustomed to the dead. Being raised by the Shimada clan, he had been raised not to be squeamish – but it was the way the ribs were squashed in like they were mere toothpicks, and beneath that, he could see the liquefied mush that used to be human organs. It was a train wreck he couldn’t look away from, and no amount of training could truly prepare him for the reeking heady scent of blood and battle and viscera. It was different, when his clan killed. Neater, precise. His father had always wanted to keep the hallways and rooms clean, because tatami was awful to try and clean.

He wanted to laugh at the surrealistic situation he was in. Genji was thinking about his father’s tatami mats rather than making sure his brother was okay. Please, don’t let the body be Hanzo’s. If Genji stared too long, he could make out a swathe of ebony hair in the lightning strikes, and he didn’t know if he could handle it if the body was Hanzo’s.

Judging by the smears, and the surprising lack of blood near the body, it almost seemed as though the corpse had been flung all over the walls before finally settling where it lay. There was no possible way that a human had done it, but Genji was too absorbed in the viscera and heavy stench of death to really notice this.

He staggered out into the courtyard to where the body lay. He had to know if it was Hanzo. Whomever had done this to his brother would pay, and dearly. With numb hands and eyes he ignored the fascinating pulp of meat and cracked rib bones to look at the face of the body. The neck was twisted, like a wet towel that had been rung out, and was swollen and deeply bruised. He prayed, desperately and feverously, that this was not Hanzo. He couldn’t stop looking away from the gore, and to keep himself from vomiting over the corpse, he twisted the head to face him, dreading what he would find.

It was not Hanzo, but that did little to assuage him.

The body was that of his father’s. Genji had never had a great relationship with Sojiro – it was actually quite strained, and the rigid impositions his father had forced on him had only made him rebel more and more until the tension between them was insurmountable – but what alarmed him was more the fact that it was Sojiro. That would mean that someone – no, something – was strong enough to eliminate the guards, rip his sorcerous father essentially in two, and then fling his body around the courtyard like a mere play toy. His father was a strong magic user, exceptionally so, and this death could only mean one of two things. The first was that some powerful magical being had broken in, seeking vengeance against their clan or wealth or some other reason, and this was more likely given the inhuman slashes in the tatami mats down the hallways, but ignored Hanzo’s arrows embedded everywhere and glistening like grotesque jewels.

The other was far more likely…it was most likely that Hanzo had attempted a coup, decided not to involve Genji in it due to the danger involved, and managed to slay Sojiro like he was nothing. Certainly, now that Genji was looking, he could see deep, dark, angry scars in the earth from what would’ve been Sojiro’s magic. But that would be nigh impossible…Hanzo was not fully pledged yet, had not fully blossomed in his power, and more than likely was more cautious about Genji’s safety and their place in the clan to just impulsively attack the clan head. But what if there was something that set Hanzo off, finally?

Hanzo had not made it secret that he intended to force Sojiro abdicate the throne, at least with Genji. The youth had known of it for quite some time, but to finally just commit patricide with little evident remorse and perhaps even a certain morbid levity, it was unthinkable for his brother. Hanzo was too careful. A murder such as this was not a quiet hush but a loud bang, and the clan would not take kindly to this. Discretion was a must.

And yet while there was no other explanation, Hanzo was nowhere to be found. Genji went to the hallways, blindly groping for a candle that he could light. When he finally lit it, he returned to the courtyard, unable to shake the feeling of eyes searing into his back. He stood over the corpse of Sojiro, knowing his time was running short to find his brother, but Hanzo could not have gone far.

Then, a large crack of lighting split the sky in two and Genji saw a flash on the tiled roof nearest him, and he held up his candle.

A silhouette that had previously been unseen loomed into sight. At first, a large, glistening maw that was painted and still dripping with blood. Genji refused to look at the torn, silken fabric he knew came from his father’s kimono.

Next came the nostrils, flared above the bared teeth. After that was the golden eyes, luminous and beautiful, honey blazed with intensity. Then the long neck, rippled with gunmetal scales and then the body, curled and thin and long.

Hanzo was here, and had most certainly killed their father – but somehow, in doing so, Hanzo had become a dragon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please send all hate mail (and love messages, should there be any!) to @SugarBabyGenji on Twitter. Thank you for reading my terribly self indulgent fic. [This is kind of a test chapter, to get the ball rolling.]


	2. Rain and Surrealism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they set out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Surrealism; mentions of cannibalism, gore, death, and other fun stuff.

Genji had tried to run away from home before, but this night was frigid and laden with frosty rain, and this time, there would be no coming back. It was summer, but he felt numb. He had to keep moving his legs, he _had_ to, because he loved Hanzo and he knew there were men after him and his brother. In the back of his mind, he wondered – there were many scenarios that were playing out in his head, but behind that, a frustration at unanswered questions began to fester.

Hanzo had said many times he didn’t believe that Sojiro was a strong effective ruler. Genji _knew_ this. But he didn’t expect Hanzo to utterly destroy the man, in what was most likely one of his brother’s legendary fits of rage. They were rare, and in fact hadn’t occurred for years, but the youth knew his elder brother back when he was younger, and what a little spitfire he’d been.

The training for clan head had more or less stripped Hanzo of his impulsive anger, though, which is why this made him all the more confused. Hanzo had transformed from an impulsive hothead to a cold, frigid man, and it was very unlike him to just regain that spark over what might’ve been just an argument.

And putting aside all the red flags in Genji’s mind that something was not right - there was something he was missing that in his shock – his brother had somehow turned into a dragon. That was the most pressing problem. A dragon would be impossible to hide for long – he glances back and the wavy, curly Q body of his brother and just imagines how long his body would be, fully extended – but he needed to hole up somewhere. The clan members would be coming soon, if they weren’t already.

The storm ahead had begun to seep into his bones. It was a cold summer rain, one very much unlike their usual summer storms, and Genji began to wonder if perhaps this wasn’t natural. Deep dark wounds were in the earth from their father, and he had always been bold with using his innate magical power. Genji himself possessed very little, other than an unnatural penchant for trouble, so he wasn’t sure, but the rains around this time of year were always warm and comforting, like a cozy blanket setting in after days of baking in the melting sun.

He breaks out of his stupor when he feels hot breath on his back, and Hanzo is nudging him. He turns, and sees Hanzo motioning with his snout towards…something Genji couldn’t make out in the din of the rain.

“Alright, anija,” He whispers, numbly, and makes his way towards it. The closer he gets the more he realizes its an abandoned barn, right in the middle of what appeared to be a wildly overgrown rice paddy. This would do, at least long enough for them to get dry. He walks in, inspecting the place to make sure they would remain undisturbed. Hanzo flew in, immediately shooting up into rafters, hanging like grey skeins of silk among the dark wood support beams.

There were some rats, and the roof was threadbare and rotted through in quite a few sections, but the actual ground floor of the barn appeared sturdy enough for now. Long abandoned, trash and dust had accumulated amongst the musty hay.

This would do, for now.

Genji scoured the place for fresh clothes. He eventually found some that were dry, and reeked of hay and must, but he didn’t have a choice. He stripped off his clothes, ignoring the large eyes he felt burning into his back, and after wringing his clothes out into some dark corner, he laid them all out.

He would have to take stock of what exactly he had on him. He glanced up at the dragon watching him from the rafters with intense eyes. Hanzo more than likely had nothing, given he didn’t even have shreds of his hakama on.

Back to what he had, stubbornly ignoring the burning pinpricks of tears in his eyes. He laid it all out, brow furrowing.

He had his wakizashi, thankfully, and five golden shurikens. Beyond that, a small skein of woolen string, a few ruined sheets of origami paper and some baubles he’d always kept in his gi. There was little else here, and definitely no food or anything immediately useful. Regrettably, he would more than likely have to use his knife for fighting, and save the shurikens for selling. Genji had not brought any gold with him, not exactly expecting to have to flee from home so suddenly.

He glanced up at his brother again. Maybe despite the fact that Hanzo was cursed, he could still understand human language. Genji didn’t exactly know.

“Anija?” Genji asked, his voice so quiet in between the thunder claps and groaning of the barn. “Anija, can you understand me?”

Hanzo lifted his head up, blinking slowly. Was that an affirmation, or just Hanzo readjusting his new form so he was more comfortable? Genji wasn’t sure. “Please, anija, growl or something so that I know you can understand me. I need you right now.”

Hanzo’s large head snaked eerily down through the rafters, and his snout bumped into Genji’s chest. He cocked his head so that Genji could see his eyes, slits large and blown in the darkness of the barn, and Genji slowly, slowly, put a hand on his brother’s snout.

His scales were slick and hard, almost chitinous, but seemed to still be oil-slick iridescent in the dim lighting. What shocked Genji, however, was the fact they were warm, despite the freezing rain they’d journeyed through for hours to get there. He moved his hand delicately up the scales, and Hanzo blinked at him, almost patiently. A low, rumbling, deep sound echoed out from up in the rafters, and Genji realized it was Hanzo. He was growling, low and almost leisurely.

“Anija?” He croaks again, as he strokes the rigid snout, feeling a little overwhelmed. His father was dead, his home was gone, and his brother…

Was now someone he could not really communicate with. Snarls and growls as affirmations, but they would no longer be able to converse. Hanzo was still here, sure, but he wasn’t _Hanzo_ , and Genji was still extremely wary of this new form.

He stopped stroking his brother’s muzzle, and went to pile up and hide what little he had. The shurikens would be risky to sell and most likely would not see a fair price, but it was what they had. His knife would do. And…he keeps forgetting, Hanzo is a dragon. The gore in their courtyard had spoken for itself.

They would encounter many trials from their clan, the youth was sure, but nothing they couldn’t handle together.

Until he hears a crash from somewhere ahead, and as he looks up, his brother’s fluffy tail is already vacating with urgency from a newly formed hole in the roof. A cold splash of water falls right on Genji from it, and he shudders as desperation and cold sets in. Husking off the clothes and cursing Hanzo, he curls under a thick blanket of still-dry hay after air drying, and tries to sleep.

Hanzo will return to him, he knows. He has to believe his brother will come back.

His sleep is fitful and dreams more surreal than ever, with the cracks of thunder and streaks of lightning backdropping his dreams. The hay itches at his skin even in his sleep, and his wet hair sticks to his forehead. In the dream, he’s at home, his father is waiting at the table. Hanzo is here, but whenever he opens his mouth, nothing but crashes of thunder like harsh symbols comes out. His father says nothing, until Genji looks closer, and his chest is caved in and he looks down, and they’re eating the pulp from his corpse.

But it tastes delicious and Hanzo looks happy, so Genji keeps eating until all of it is gone. Then his father is gone and Hanzo is has honey colored slitted eyes in his otherwise normal face.

“Anija?” Genji asks, worried, because Hanzo is now gone but his eyes remain, glowing over a dark, smoldering corpse.

Of course, his clan would burn his father’s body. He knows this on some level, it was what they did, partially to make sure his soul would not cling to this earth and partially to dissolve the magic within his body. But this was not right, something wasn’t, it niggled the back of his mind as he watched his father’s body turn to ash.

But it wasn’t turning to ash. Instead, it was rising and growing until it loomed over them all, charred remains hanging like loose ropes from the cavernous chest. Sojiro’s eyes were now coals and he roared piercingly as what should’ve killed him only brought him back to life and he was stronger, stronger, so strong that Hanzo and Genji would never defeat him.

Genji woke up shivering, the hatred in those coals burning and searing his mind long after the dream had ended.

He looked up to the rafters, seeing no brother-dragon and nothing but the sky unnaturally dark and angry through the holes in the roof.

Soon, they would have to move on. They could not risk being discovered. But for now, Genji was alone and exhausted, and since the eyes burned away any ability to sleep, he waited with heavy eyes for his brother to come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fixed a typo in the summary that I didn't realize was there. Oops. Should be fixed now. As always, thank you for reading. Please send comments, questions, concerns to @SugarBabyGenji on Twitter.


	3. Taking Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo comes back and they set out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double chapter because I haven't updated in forever.
> 
> Warnings: Fluff.
> 
> Quick Explanation: An inrō/inrou is a small compartmental lacquered box usually inlaid with fancy designs that is tied with an equally fancy rope and bead and suspended from a waist sash. It is a part of traditional Japanese dress. It's kind of like a purse, and was generally used to carry seals and medicine.
> 
> From time to time, I will probably include some parts of traditional Japanese dress for flavor. If there's ever something I feel like needs explaining, I will also put it up here with warnings. There shouldn't be too much of that, because it breaks immersion pretty badly, but I also feel like...they're in Japan, even if it's fantasy Japan, and it felt really weird saying "it's a backpack" and I figured that leather probably wouldn't be used too much in ancient Japan due to scarcity of materials and...I'm rambling.

Hanzo did not come back for a long time.

Genji took out one of his shuriken, practicing twirling it. He would be unable to hunt in this rain, being unable to see his own hands much less twenty feet in front of him. He was occupied himself with where they would go; Hanzo could most definitely handle himself out there. Genji refused to believe otherwise.

There was also the issue of grief. It threatened to take him under, drown him in its deep waters, and never release him. It swam beneath the surface of his mind, like a shark just waiting to drag him under. If he thought about where he was going, then he wouldn’t have to think about where he was headed. The shark could circle and circle and never get him. He just had to stay distracted and plan.

Hanzo was definitely the better planner of the two. Genji thought about the last time he had tried to plan something, and almost chuckled to himself. It was Hanzo’s twelfth birthday. The younger boy had been around nine. He’d become a ringleader in planning a surprise party, as Sojiro had permitted him to do so. Of course, being nine, it really hadn’t gone well and, well, Genji had conveniently forgot that _no_ , Hanzo _doesn’t_ like green and also _no,_ Hanzo _hated_ surprises.

There had been worse birthdays, to be honest. Thinking back, Genji had planned it all out to his father, but he had planned it as something _he_ would want, rather than what his brother would want.

Hanzo could be stubborn and reluctant, but he still appreciated the effort Genji put into his terrible birthday gift. It was a sumi-e painting of a dog that for some reason Genji had thought his brother would love. It ended up looking more like a pile of vomit, but he could remember Hanzo delicately hanging it on his wall like it was the Katsujika Hokusai itself.

He chuckled this time, but it was a broken sound. It was approaching daybreak. The clouds outside were lightening, but only slightly. The storm still raged as if it was fresh in the sky, and the clouds groaned in anticipation of more thunder. This was no doubt the work of Sojiro, the man who could alternately be the chiseled block of ice Hanzo saw him as, and the indulgent father Genji had once seen him as. This was his cold, hard, unyielding rage. Despite it only being only directed at him as he grew older and more rebellious, Genji could realize the anger and message it sent the two brothers as clear as day. The rain that pelted him earlier had felt like the stinging burn of Sojiro’s fury – so unfeeling, so cold, that the skin it touches burned in frosted agony.

It hadn’t always been that way. Genji hadn’t always felt that ice cold poker brand aimed him. It was not until he was older, more experienced at slipping out of the castle, that he began to rebel against Sojiro.

The brothers had not fought like cats and dogs when they were younger over their father. Despite Hanzo having been instilled with the sense of duty that rang deep within his soul, and Genji had been raised with nothing but spoiled affection and indulgence, they did not fight until they were older. Hanzo had been the one who Sojiro was hard on, while Genji had the pet name of Sparrow. He was fast and sprightly and joyous, while Hanzo was an immobile force of honor, duty, and had little sense of humor. The rigorous training Hanzo had undergone to become Archmage of their clan had sucked the very humor and childhood right out from the eldest Shimada, and Genji could not ever recall the man truly smiling, except when they were alone, many years ago.

But he knew his brother felt it was necessary and right. When Hanzo was younger and a little bit more naïve, Genji could tell he bought into whatever Sojiro deigned to teach him. He wanted to be the best clan leader and effectively the next Sojiro, whenever the man decided to pass along the clan to him. That had changed when he grew older, although it took a long time for Genji to agree with that point of view.

Genji watched as his brother grew into a man who was stifling not only others but himself. He was rigid and inflexible in thoughts, and it pained Genji to see Hanzo turn into a warped, twisted mess of confused knots. Before the murder had occurred, Hanzo had been speaking for a few months about removing Sojiro from the clan. At this point, the younger Shimada had fought him reluctantly – he had a soft spot for Sojiro, but he also could not bear to see Sojiro crush his brother into submission. Hanzo needed room to grow and become himself, or he would never be effective as a leader. His brother had been sure and confident when he was a miniature Sojiro, but a mere clone of the man would never succeed. It was fresh leadership that the Shimada clan needed.

The clan had been dying. Hanzo didn’t know this at that time, only that Sojiro was ruling with an iron fist. But the stench of decay had spread across the winds to their stronghold, and Hanzo began to truly embody his ego and pride that had been steadily overgrowing the patch Sojiro had planted it in. Genji, worried about Hanzo’s conflicting behavior and future, had snuck into Sojiro’s meeting room, had seen the papers – the clan was dying, and Sojiro was more like a vampire than an actual leader. Thus, the next time Hanzo approached him about a coup - he encouraged his brother’s ego to grow. Make it so that he feels unstoppable, so that he can eliminate Sojiro. Hanzo was about to transform from an immovable object to an unstoppable force, and the wheels of rebellion were turning and could no longer be stopped.

Genji had not meant to encourage Hanzo to murder the man who once called him Sparrow. He wanted Hanzo to – with the least amount of bloodshed possible – to duel Sojiro and win…in a fair fight. The rules of clan demanded that previous leaders be treated with the utmost respect, and a formal duel for rights should more than prove Hanzo was capable of leading. A formal match, man vs man, would show that those ancient shadow men who truly ran the family that Hanzo was level-headed, rational, and first and foremost, graceful and yet deadly. Then again, the younger Shimada had feared that it would end up this way regardless, and that his wishes were more than likely juvenile and naïve. Of course their father, just as prideful as Hanzo, would never willingly turn over his empire, no matter how decayed the underbelly of it was.

What Genji had truly wanted was to save his family. It was dysfunctional and broken, but Hanzo, his beloved elder brother, could’ve saved it. If he didn’t truly believe that, Genji would’ve never pushed Hanzo. Would’ve never convinced him to eventually murder Sojiro. Would’ve never made Hanzo disgrace himself.

In breaking the ancient clan rules, in which murdering your predecessor in cold blood, was seen as dishonorable. It was viewed as something vile or even obscene, even when many previously opted to out of a formal duel and more _discreet_ methods took place. It came down to a lack of tact, dignity, and most importantly, a ruthless, insatiable temper or pride. Any of those would automatically disqualify Hanzo from taking Sojiro’s throne, and he had shown all of the disqualifying traits in spades.

That’s why they’d had to flee. That’s why the clan was now after him, he was sure of it. Sojiro was supposed to hand Hanzo the clan when he deemed Hanzo ready – an heir was never supposed to so indiscreetly murder their head of household in such a garish way. The clan would still be loyal to Sojiro, as they would feel that Hanzo had weakened the clan by removing the strong figurehead. They cared about the how, whereas Genji knew Hanzo cared more about the _why_.

They could’ve made this work, but that avenue had been ruled out ages ago. Nearly from birth the elders had seen that Genji was unfit to rule, and Hanzo instead had been groomed from that time onward.

On one hand, this situation enabled Hanzo to grow. Sojiro was no longer here to stifle him. Now, he would have the room to become truly great and grow as a person and leader, and perhaps one day even come back to rule the Shimada clan.

On the other hand, their father was now dead, their home was somewhere they could no longer return to, they had no supplies, and Genji was half-mourning a brother that to him was essentially dead.

There was no Hanzo here that could smile a little when they were alone, and Genji could watch those strong shoulders drop the weight of the world, just for a few minutes. There was no Hanzo that would spar with Genji, that would teach him how to make the perfect cup of tea, that would cover for Genji when Genji couldn’t stand it anymore and had to sneak out and would even cover when Genji came back, love bites dotting his neck. Hanzo didn’t judge him, perhaps even looking at Genji with a tinge of jealousy every time he came back. Genji understood…there was no room for Hanzo to leave, to spread his wings. They were clipped and he would never fly truly free.

But those were long nights ago indeed. While they hadn’t fought when they were younger, they fought viciously and terribly as they grew. Hanzo and Genji had had…a truce of sorts. Genji hated it, that he couldn’t handle being in the room with the man more than five minutes before they fought, sometimes with words, other times with their wakizashi.

It made his gut flip and twist into a knot. There had been so many times when they could’ve reconciled. Instead, Hanzo was now a dragon that Genji wasn’t 100% sure was even his brother at all. He seemed able to understand what little his brother had said, but that didn’t prove that it was Hanzo at all times behind those eyes.

For all Genji knew, he could be eaten up within the night, never seen again.

On one hand, that would be fantastic and solve the situation they were in. Genji was the one that actually had to _care_ this time, because Sojiro was dead and Hanzo was otherwise indisposed.

On the other hand, he was selfish, and he wanted Hanzo back before he went anywhere. His brother needed to be whole again.

Thus, he came full circle and would have to plan.

\-----

He fell asleep while planning.

He didn’t _mean_ to – it just _happened_. The younger Shimada was absolutely terrible at planning: he knew it, it bored him, but he figured he could get his brain to cooperate. It didn’t, so he woke up with straw poking him in the dick and he hastily climbed out, ignored his rumbling stomach, threw on his clothes, and stalked outside.

The clouds were still dark, but they rumbled almost pleasantly as they were beginning to wilt. Genji watched the rain halt as he relieved himself behind a tree.

That was one less problem, but it was still too marshy for him to hunt properly. He sorely wished he had a bow, as his wakizashi was far too close ranged and his shuriken far too valuable to waste.

The great news was that in his dreams, he had dreamed of his childhood.

It had been a short dream, and Sojiro hadn’t been in it, despite Genji clearly remembering him being there. However, the chirps of cicadas and the smell of deep earth had been brought back to him, clear as day, and he could remember a giant forested mountain trail.

In the sunlight, the trail markers had glittered with a sparkling sky blue hue, and they even seemed to glow despite the ancient behemoth trees that obscured most sunlight. They’d followed the stones up the mountain, unhurried, despite Genji being desperately impatient, as he always had been.

The farther up the mountain they’d climbed, the more away from civilization they got, the deeper a tingle settled in Genji’s bones. He’d tried scratching his skin, but while it left red marks in his skin, it didn’t stop his hair from raising slightly and his bones from tingling.

Then he saw it, and his eyes widened so much that even Hanzo had giggled at his face. But no, it was _monstrous_ , and Sojiro had been quick to chide Hanzo for being uncouth.

But it was a dark elliptoid of awesome size, like a giant nest of inky twigs woven up into the massive trees near it, and Genji could tell that Hanzo was in awe, too. It dwarfed the trees and seemed to pulse slightly in their wooden arms. The minimalistic stairway up to it had been also inky black, with little geometric designs of glittering sky blue in them. Genji had stumbled a few times going up, too busy watching the blue lines _flow_ with what seemed almost like an alien blood.

Sojiro had let him gawk for a little bit, before he ushered them inside. The tingle got worse and Genji himself nearly passed out once inside the sphere, but Sojiro had simply propped him up in a chair. He’d seen Hanzo blink at him once, then wink – one of their secret messages – but Genji was far too woozy for that.

He passed out in the dream and woke up in real life.

He couldn’t remember the witch’s name, but he knew it was a vision sent to him on purpose. The younger Shimada could probably remember it on the trek there, if he tried hard enough. First would be the prospect of food, then maybe finding Hanzo – or him coming back, as Genji wanted so badly to believe he would – and then heading there, if he could get Hanzo to go. More than likely, however, Hanzo would go if he thought it best and was still in full control of his facilities in his dragon form…regardless of what Genji thought best.

He walked out of the little barn they’d been in, what little he had rolled up and tucked into his Shimada clan  He needed more supplies. He had no clothes, no backpack, no tinder, and no food.

But as he began to scan the horizon for buildings nearby that he could ransack, he noticed a quivering blob far in the distance. It looked like a bird with a broken wing that couldn’t fly right, but as it grew closer, he could see the oil-slick scales and navy mane being windswept along the coiling body. It was Hanzo, and he had something in his mouth.

He landed incredibly clumsily, managing to almost knot himself in half. Hanzo wasn’t quite used to this body yet, and his noodle of his body being dropped so gracelessly and so un-Hanzo-like upon the ground was incredibly amusing. When had his brother ever been so graceless? Probably never. He was always so poised.

Genji laughed a little, and then the remembrance of his brother’s old form snuffed the laugh out as soon as it left his mouth. It was sobering, seeing Hanzo struggle with this form. At least they weren’t both turned into dragons.

Hanzo dropped whatever was in his maw onto the ground, and nosed it towards Genji. He cautiously bent down to snatch it up, and blinked when Hanzo nudged it into his hands. Alright, Hanzo clearly wanted him to have it.

Inside was a few more shuriken, a decent amount of dried and salted fish – one of Genji’s favorites, actually – and a small amounts of coins , all inside a lacquered dark wood inrou. Genji turned the beautiful wooden container over, and realized he recognized the seal. It was the Shimada clan seal, in fact, it was Hanzo’s old seal, and he ran a hand over the curling gold leaf imperial dragon along the front.

He would’ve had to steal this from their home, most likely in the dead of night, and grabbed whatever he could. There were some indents in the wood and places where the rope was frayed, most likely from where Hanzo had clutched it within his jaws. It made him sad, but he smiled anyways and came up to Hanzo who was watching him.

“Thank you, Anija,” Genji said, smoothing down a piece of Hanzo’s mane that was windswept and tousled. Hanzo hated having a single hair out of place, so Genji combed his fingers through the front part until it laid perfectly against his brother’s scaled forehead.

He knew the risk that Hanzo had taken in procuring the inrou. He tried hard not to imagine dragon formed Anija sneaking into his own room, more than like scratching and completely destroying the entire room to find the inrou, rope, and gold, then somehow managing the twisting hallways to come upon the old storeroom to steal as much fish as would fit in the small container.

Genji took one of the fish out, thin and flat as it was now, and tried his best to savor it. While Hanzo had fit most likely as much as he thought the inrou could hold and had more than likely struggled to even fit what little he had in there with his large snout, rations were thin for the long trip ahead of them. The sorceress’ lair was quite a few days away on foot, and the fish would suffice for a few days if Genji ate sparingly, but that didn’t factor in Hanzo’s large form or water rations.

How would they make it there, they were in the middle of nowhere, and Genji didn’t even know the direction to take –

But he was being scooped up into claws as large as his torso. They were bright silver and wickedly sharp, and Genji felt one of them prick his thigh as Hanzo tried clumsily yet gently to pick him up.

Then, his body coiled like a spring and he shot into the air, obviously struggling with carrying something in his claws for the first time. But then, despite the rocky take off, Genji could see that they were in flight.

Exhilaration filled Genji’s heart and as they soared into the sky, he felt his heart beating hard in his chest. It was a mixture of adrenaline and happiness and freedom and fear, but he found that he couldn’t stop smiling. A whoop of glee escaped him as they soared through the cloudy sky, to which he heard a light rumble that sounded almost like a smothered laugh from Hanzo’s chest.

He had the sudden urge to look over Hanzo’s claws, but at the same time, was absolutely terrified that it would set him off balance or Hanzo off balance, so he settled now for sitting in his brother’s incredibly warm and surprisingly comfortable claws. He felt safe and calm, like he could take on the world – he knew that this dragon was his brother, completely. The inrou was still warm from Hanzo’s couriering, and it felt heavy and reassuring in his lap.

However, there was a large thumping sound from the inrou in the bottom compartment, and Genji managed to get it open when Hanzo smoothed out most of the turbulence of flight. In it, he smiled – there was a glittering rock that pushed its sky blue blood through geometric veins. He didn’t have to convince Hanzo were to go, his brother already knew, and Genji found he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

He was alive, and so was Hanzo, and while their circumstances weren’t the best, they were at least alive and at last free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always for reading this, leaving kudos (20!!!! I hit 20!!!!!!!!!!!!) and leaving comments (I got my first one, thank you MadHattaProductions)! I am so shocked and humbled that people are enjoying this self-indulgent fic. As always if you would like to break me with sweet words, I can be reached at @SugarBabyGenji on Twitter.


	4. Symmetra, Witch of the Wilds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first step on the journey. They say the first step is the hardest, but in this case, that's not true. This is the easiest thing Genji will ever have to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Small bit of fluff between brothers.

Her name was Satya. Genji had finally remembered it.

Hanzo had probably remembered it, he was good at things like that, always memorizing all the names of everyone in important. Genji had never really cared to pay attention, and meeting Satya the first time wasn’t really any different. Past the hut that she had woven like a spider with her web, he couldn’t remember her demeanor beyond an icy frigidness that lowered the temperature of her hut like a sudden cold snap.

He played with the rock like it was one of his shuriken, switching it between fingers a little clumsily. It was heavier than his shuriken, but it wasn’t quite as sharp, so he wouldn’t have too many new scars to add.

He looked up at his brother. Genji had grown slightly accustomed to the wiggly body now, and he was interested in just what Hanzo saw and thought and felt in the dragon form. The younger Shimada had seen Hanzo respond when he called, so he still recognized his name. That was good. But just how much of this being was Hanzo and how much was a beast remained to be seen. He had also shot through the roof clumsily, abandoning Genji without a second thought in a crucial moment. It seemed as though his mind was now two sides of the same coin, and he wondered how long, exactly, it would be before one side won out.

He flipped the rock again. He also didn’t know the extent of Hanzo’s newfound flight capabilities, but Genji suspected it was part of his brother’s natural magical well, just directed in a different way. They were fast coming up on Satya’s hut, judging by the deadened trees that seemed to have fluorescent glimmers among their mostly dry husks.

He turned a little to get a better view, and nearly fell out of Hanzo’s clutch. Below them, the entire forest…it was still standing, but it was quiet and dark and void of life. The trees stood and seemed to silently moan, tombstones in a long dead cemetery. Beyond their blackened bark, though, he saw it.

Just like the trees in the outer ring, they had a weird glimmer to their leaves. It flowed at moments, sparking almost angrily in little bursts before the light faded. When Genji looked even closer, he saw it.

The entire forest was now her domain. Inky black tendrils were curled around nearly every tree, twisted up so severely into the forest, it was hard to distinguish the tendrils from the trees themselves. Satya had caused an entire forest ranging half of a mountainside to die.

He knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but this just proved exactly how much she could do. It had only been about ten years. That was a mere minute to someone who had existed since the ancient times, and it seemed that her power had spiked from unfathomable to almost celestial. It scared Genji as much as it intrigued him, as he had no magic of his own to wield.

What if she decided to kill them? Or do something else to them? Sojiro had called him aside one day, trying to explain Satya after their visit. Genji had once again put little stock in his father’s words back then, but now they were ringing clear as day. Satya herself had kind of been an introduction into the laws of the magical world.

“Sparrow,” He’d said, gravely, as Genji sat and twirled his wakizashi, “What was your impression of the witch he’d met today?”

Genji had gone on to say he didn’t remember Satya very much – but Sojiro gripped his arm, hard, and Genji yelped in pain.

“I didn’t take you there just to squander your time!” He growled, his hand now shaking Genji angrily, “She is important in all of this! When you are grown, you will meet her again. Just remember this fact – someone may appear duplicitous, but there is no way to be two-faced when the only side you’re on is your own!”

Those words hadn’t made sense at the time. Alright, so Sojiro had yelled at him for the first time in a long time. It was often Hanzo in that position, not Genji, and it startled him so badly he’d started crying. He was only a little kid at the time, and he hadn’t even known what duplicitous meant, but now…

Sojiro was right, which confirmed Genji’s long-time suspicion that the old man had more power than he had let either of his ‘beloved’ sons in on. However, focusing on Satya – she hadn’t seemed like she fit that word. At the time, Genji had most likely been too young to really comprehend that Satya had been working “both sides” according to Sojiro’s implications. But did that mean that she was working against and for the Shimada clan at the same time? Or against the country and with it?

He still didn’t know the answers to those questions, but he was nervous. Magic was the one thing he didn’t know anything about and couldn’t really understand, despite him asking Hanzo over and over to describe what it was like. The younger Shimada had been schooled in it just like his elder brother, but the lessons hadn’t stuck because Genji couldn’t begin to comprehend what it felt like. It was like…trying to imagine what it felt like to fly, but because Genji never had wings nor a magical curse cast upon him by a vengeful father, he couldn’t realistically imagine it. The lessons had been intangible and ungraspable.

He should’ve paid more attention. That would make dealing with Symmetra – Satya’s formal witch name -  so much easier.

Unfortunately, he was going in blind, and there was no Sojiro or Hanzo to help him relate to an immensely powerful being who would more than likely fuck him over just for her own entertainment. But he was still going. He smoothed out Hanzo’s windswept mane after they clumsily landed on top.

Genji hops down, and now on the ground, he can truly appreciate the size of her den. It was easily a hundred times larger than her ellipsoid hut earlier, and the magic from it poured through cracks in his skin. His bones tingled, as if called by her magic’s beckoning, and his feet felt planted into place.

Out of the corner of his eye wards flashed a cobalt blue in the air, woven so tightly into the atmosphere that even he, with no magical inclination, felt suffocated by them. The ground was covered with ashen leaves that were long dead, but they shimmered and crackled beneath his feet. The hair raised on the back of his neck.

If he was not here for Hanzo, he would’ve run as soon as he saw the ashen trees. Some things, mystical and dark, should be left undisturbed by those with eyes that could not fully comprehend the magnitude of their terrible greatness. The younger Shimada has a feeling deep in his tingling bones that Symmetra would crush him, that’s all he could think, paralyzed, rooted to the spot – but Hanzo snakes his neck down, and his golden eyes glimmer in the pale light.

He nudged his brother towards the stairs, his breath hot in the crisp air against Genji’s cold back. Hanzo was right. They didn’t have a choice. Genji wouldn’t leave until Satya had either cured his brother or given him the tools to do so himself.

His feet were heavy on the steps, and his heart pounded. Every fiber in his being was screaming, but he was born and raised into the Shimada clan. Magic would never be something he could understand, but Genji would try – he would walk into the flames of hell for his brother, and it would only make him stronger. This was just the first step into unknown territory, and he couldn’t let it scare him away from his goals.

Hanzo free, free to live. Smiling one of those rare smiles that made Genji stop in his tracks. Laughing quietly under his breath at some stupid joke Genji said, trying desperately to keep his composure. Genji _missed_ all of those Hanzos, even the one that fought with him relentlessly. He would take spats and fights and struggles in stride so long as the opportunity for his beautiful brother to shine bright was there, following right on the heels for strife.

And Genji could still feel him, read him a little bit, and that made it easier. But vague half-understandings and the beast lingering in his elder brother’s eyes would never be enough. Genji knows without help something will happen, something _terrible_ , and he can’t shake that feeling.

He knocks on the door of her hut. Satya would help them. Genji would allow no alternative. He steeled himself, deep down, and began to take the first step on his journey.

It was dark in her hut, and it reeked thickly, hotly, of incense and other indescribable mystical smells. Sojiro had never done potions, but Genji could almost taste the layers in the air as the mist ran like rivers down the side of her cauldron. They were like layers in a cake – thick and distinct in their own right. Most was dark and bestial in nature, that much he could discern, as thick as a bear’s fur and as heavy as Yakushima’s giant cedar trees, but underneath the heaviness was a glossy, opaque layer that smelled of sharp, snapping cold and ink.

The smell of wilderness and ink got thicker as he approached the witch standing over the cauldron, her face illuminated as the cauldron sparked hotly when she added various ingredients. It confirmed what Genji knew – that this potion was undoubtedly for his brother, and that he was totally out of his element.

“Sparrow,” She murmurs, before he can say anything. Satya does not turn her head, nor even blink an eye – she has nothing else to say, apparently, as they stand in silence for quite a stretch of time. Genji would dare not say anything and disturb her, as she precisely measured and threw the ingredients into the cauldron.

But even the word throw was too inelegant for what she was doing with the ingredients – she was not handling them delicately, but with such a measure of practiced and innate grace and confidence that Genji couldn’t help but admire it. Magic was something a little different for everyone, that much he knew. Satya, it seemed, was given the gifts of grace and beauty with her movements, almost as if she herself was something fluid.

He notes that she called him not by his given name, and he breathes an inward sigh of relief. Mages, especially those with Satya’s clout and age, are a finicky bunch. It is considered abhorrently rude to speak to one without using their formal ceremonial Mage name, which they choose themselves when they are deemed magical and practice under. In Genji’s case, although he knew Symmetra knew his true name and most likely his intentions, she had shown a certain degree of respect by referring to his Mage name despite him being non-magical. This was off to a good start.

Time to break that good start, Genji thought, “Symmetra, Witch of the Wilds,” He addresses her formally, noticing a slight cocked eyebrow on an otherwise blank face, “I know you know why I’m here. If you want, I would be more than happy to regale you with my tales of how I got here.” His needling earns him a glance, although he can’t read it.

Symmetra knows why Genji stands in her hut, and why there’s a dragon nestled on top of her roof. She saw them coming, perhaps years ago, else the potion would not have been brewing. Genji hated these kinds of pretenses, they were so worthless and yet considered a grave offense should he not follow the strict protocol. In fact, he may be turned into a dragon himself if he didn’t watch his tongue.

“Sparrow,” She says slowly, almost testing out the sound of each syllable, “Bring me three scales from your brother’s hide, and a lock of his mane.”

And she says it so commandingly, so decisively, that he obeys. She leaves little room for disagreements in her tone and generosity, and Genji has no choice. He is at her mercy now, and would no doubt be fetching many more things in the days to come. Genji would have to grin and bear it – but the potion, it smells of wilderness, much like Hanzo now. He _knows_ it’s for his brother, and he smiles as he climbs up the side of the den, and pats Hanzo’s nose.

“Anija, this might hurt, but I think you and I have both experienced worse things – Sojiro had the sharpest tongue when I would come home late,” He chuckles, “Remember how he used to scold me, and then turn around and lash at you for trying to cover up for me? Compared to that, I think three little scales are nothing at all.” Deftly, he quickly plucks out the scales before Hanzo can blink. Hanzo blinks afterwards but stands still, and Genji just smiles up at him.

Maybe this form wasn’t so bad. The scales were iridescent and dark in his hands, and they glittered in tiny bands of prisms when he moved them in the light. They were gorgeous, far more precious than any gem, especially considering they came from Hanzo. His eyes were now the warmest of golds, like the gold on his shuriken, and shine with intelligence and honeyed magic. His mane was colored like the sky on a cloudy day – and the wisps of fur that clung to his hand when Genji gently grabbed some was like the finest woven silk. Everything about this form was beautiful and enhancing and utterly disarming.

Genji sheared off the fur with his wakizashi, purposely a little higher up near the hollow before Hanzo’s forelegs. No one except Genji would see it there.

He rubs Hanzo’s snout affectionately, and watches as Hanzo shakes his body out like a dog, causing all the trees to shake like wounded soldiers, and Genji laughs. His brother could probably fell the whole forest simply from a gigantic itch on the lengthy plane of his back.

Chuckling as he leaves, he notices a rainbow twinkle amongst the slick inky wood of Symmetra’s den, and picks it up.

It was a fourth scale and a little bit of fur, and they too made Genji’s bones tingle. Once alone, he would put them in the inrou for safe keeping until they were needed. For now, they would sit inside his gi, making his skin prick with warmth when it touched him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, thanks for reading. As always, any comments or kudos (wow, this story took off, more than I would've expected! WOW!) are super awesome and make my day.
> 
> If anyone reads this, I'm struggling to get through this because while I have no personal qualms against Symmetra, she's not my favorite. Soon...we'll start getting to some good stuff. Like a certain someone I can't WAIT to introduce. Should be in the chapter after this one.
> 
> I also started college up again, so that makes this harder to write between working full-time, schooling full-time, and having very little time left for three very attractive men.
> 
> As always, please send any comments, questions, or concerns, to @SugarBabyGenji on Twitter.


	5. Symmetra, Witch of the Wilds II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Symmetra, O Witch of the Wilds, O Governess of the Ashen Cemetery, O Seductress of the Dark Den, O Ye of Alien Blood...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Cliffhangers woot woot! Implied Shimada incest offerings if you squint hard enough...

Symmetra drops the scales in, with little pauses in between, and stirs the cauldron in a precise motion. Genji can’t really comment on her magic process, but he does notice her donning an obsidian cape made of what looks like shifting sands, and he stands up from his lounging on a chaise in the central part of her hut. As she puts up the hood, it’s as if she just disappears into the darkness, and it takes him a little bit of squinting to see where she had moved to.

“It will be done at daybreak,” She states as she struts out the newly formed opening to her hut, and it quickly sews shut as soon as Satya leaves the threshold.

He’s fine with being alone, it gives him time to plan. This potion is important, he knows, but he doesn’t exactly know the effects of it. Symmetra would not tell him, Genji realizes. He will have to go blindly into this and trust whatever force is eliciting her help.

As the younger Shimada gracefully folds himself down back onto the chaise lounge, he tries to plan, he really does. He’s got shurikens, he’s got some small amount of food, he’s got shelter for now...and he has his brother. His eyebrows furrow as he runs over the items again. His thoughts are blurry somehow, and like wet noodles slip out of his grasp when he tries to take hold.

It’s hot in the hut, he’s got to get fresh air to clear his head. But when he stands up, Genji quickly realizes there’s no real way out of the hut that he can see. The walls, while woven strands of some sort of silky black substance, don’t so much as budge when he tries to pry them apart for his own opening. Even his wakizashi and shuriken make no dent, and he frowns as the scent of the earthy potion makes his head swim.

The magic was growing stronger and with it came an arid burning at the back of his throat. He chokes and coughs, looking around for some sort of water he can actually drink – but all that comes up are potions, all of which he gets the distinct foreboding feeling of impending death upon looking them over.

The scale chafes a little at his prickling skin, and he coughs again. His vision is getting blurry, and he stumbles, eyes watering.

When he blinks again, he’s sitting in a massive open room with impossibly high ceilings. The octagonal tiled floor is opulent and polished, seeming to sparkle like miniscule opals in a kaleidoscope of colors. Even the columns and walls, though white and polished, glimmer like they were carved out of white sugar. Then, when Genji tilts his head up, an already amazed Genji opens his mouth in stunned wonder.

Wherever he’s gone, it’s impossibly gorgeous. The ceiling is a cornucopia of pastel glass of all sizes and colors, woven together with thin silver darting between each piece. It lights the room in a soft, ever shifting, rainbow glow that makes the nearly empty room feel alive. When the young teen holds out his hand, the colors splash onto his skin almost playfully, every shifting his hand into a myriad of wonders.

This must what it’s like to have magic, Genji thinks, as he just watches birds fly over top of the curved glass dome above, their wings made even more brilliantly colored by the kaleidoscope. His core feels warm and fuzzy and comfortable, and he tastes almost a familiar, nostalgic, slight sweetness as he sits and enjoys the room alone in a daze.

Despite all the signals he got from this room, he also has a nagging feeling of doubt in the back of his mind. It’s almost like it feels forbidden, because this room while amazingly gorgeous and somewhere that Genji could quite possibly want to squander the rest of his life in, it also screams and tastes and feels terribly _wrong_. The thorn becomes bigger as the sweet taste of the magic in his mouth is placed in his brain – it tastes like digitalis. It tastes like the poison Sojiro used to slip into his drink, grooming him…

This is most definitely not good. He’s solid and tangible, he finds after pinching his skin. There’s the quiet din of people sounds far down below. It sounds like a lot of people, and no doubt someone will eventually come up here.

If the air is poison to non-magic users or as some sort of warding against unauthorized people entering the tower, he’s screwed either way. Worse yet - he hears people coming up the stairs. Listening intently while pressed against the wall next to the door, he listens over his pounding heart.

It’s two distinct sets of steps. One is slow and measured, with purpose. The other is slightly clunky, a little heavy-footed, but muffled - soft shoes. Genji flatters further against the wall as they get closer.

He can’t make out what they’re saying, but some part of his brains listens as he scours the room for a way out. The sweet poison taste is cloying in his mouth and choking him. The air shimmers in front of him as he forces himself to breathe slowly, shallowly.

The voices are feminine and cheery. Both have an accent, one thicker than the other, and sounds almost familiar…

He shutters against the wall, and breathes. The door opens.

He blinks again and he’s a crumpled heap on the floor of Symmetra’s hut. The sweet poison taste in his mouth lingers, and he realizes he’s been tasting the thick air of her hut. Some of her potions were toppled when he fell, and their sweet smell chokes him still.

Wherever he went just now…

Genji really didn’t know. He’d never heard his father talk about any sort of official magic place like that. It was almost monastery in vibes, with it’s beautiful tranquility and shimmering colors. It had been unlike any other place he’d ever seen, and even now, he ached to go back.

Genji’s pulled out of his thoughts by a thumping on the roof. It’s sudden and harsh, and if he listens closely, he can hear a deep, ethereal noise.

It’s a dark, deep, angry growl, like a piercing crack of thunder in a storm ushered in by whimpering clouds. He’d know that biting anger anywhere - it’s undoubtedly Hanzo, but he isn’t sure why.

He climbs up to the utmost shelf and clears it off hastily, giving just the barest amount of care required. The younger Shimada can’t save Hanzo if he’s in danger, but that’s not really what he’s worried about. He has a strong feeling that Symmetra is somehow involved, and his suspicions are confirmed when he hears her laughing.

It’s a cold laughter, stripped of mirth like her ash tree cemetery is stripped of life. Chills run down his spine as he feels her walk towards Hanzo. This is not going to end well, but he’s trapped.

“Join me, O Wise Dragon,” Genji can feel her smiling, her lips wrapping coldly around her cold dead face, “Imagine the world we could create together. I know your brother is not magical and cannot sense it, but I do. I know what this blessing has bestowed upon you.” Genji’s back is slick with sweat and the shelf is starting to lean, but he desperately cranes his neck up to hear better. “You may not be able to cast spells, sure, and you lost your father.” She pauses. The next words out of her mouth aren’t clipped, they’re smooth, like ribbon. Like glimmering electric blue alien blood magic. “We both know why. But this...with me, you can create a world that protects your brother. Protects yourself. We can make anything. Your power is strong enough and I,” That feral greed leaks back into her voice, “I can more than contribute.”

Hanzo is deathly silent. Genji feels his heart stuttering. Is he seriously considering her offer? Any man alive could feel the greed behind her royal mannerism of speech. But then, if Hanzo considered, Genji would be free of the burden.

No! He shakes his head. Uncursing Hanzo isn’t what he asked for, but his brother will never be a burden. Genji’s heart flutters as he thinks about Hanzo covering up for him on those late nights, about Hanzo not asking or telling about all those bruises and love bites, about Hanzo’s rare, soft smile.

Hanzo can’t accept Symmetra’s offer. Genji won’t let him. He’ll walk to the ends of the earth to right whatever Hanzo did wrong, and uncurse a man who can now walk free. Even though it’s not his mistake to make, Genji feels responsible.

It’s a weird feeling, but he knows that this is what Hanzo would do were the tables turned.

Genji begins to claw in earnest at the roof of Satya’s hut. It’s yielding slightly, and Genji claws harder. He breaks out his wakizashi, trying to get further.

“I know what you’re thinking,” She says, “That you can’t leave your brother behind.” He can feel her voice drop, tantalizing Hanzo, tempting him, “But he won’t make it far without your father, anyways. He’s useless without any magic, and useless to you. He can’t even uncurse his own brother!”

She laughs slightly, amused - and then she screams. Genji hears a crunching noise, a wet slick tearing sound, and Genji is stuck inside the hut, unable to hear anything but Symmetra’s muffled sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading, commenting, and all of the kudos. I'm humbled by the sheer amount of hits and stuff that this story has gotten. Wow! As always you can reach me at @SugarBabyGenji on Twitter.


	6. Symmetra, Witch of the Wilds III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to dig in, Genji.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Body horror, gore, blood. Genji loses his temper for the first of many times. Fluff between brothers. Probably lots of OOC. Who knows?

Genji lingers on the shelf, hunkering with his back cramping. He feels like he’s waiting for something, some sort of signal from up above, but without being able to see what’s happening he can’t make out any details. If he pricks up his ears and holds still, he can faintly smell blood over the resounding scent of the wilderness potion.

He climbs down, careful not to disturb more potions. The ones he’s already spilled, while still fragrant with sickly sweet death, no longer burn his irises with their vibrant neon jelly liquids. Instead, the vials are empty, almost as if licked squeaky clean.

The den quivers slightly when he reaches the floor, and Genji trips onto Symmetra’s worn potion bench. That has to be Hanzo departing, no doubt feeling as though his statement came off loud and clear.

He sits for a few heartbeats. His brain is overloading, he’s overwhelmed, and he realizes he can’t move even if he wanted to. His mind is reeling, he suddenly feels suffocated again, and not just by the potion.

Hanzo, his dearest elder brother, killed _again._ This is also another unplanned death. Is Hanzo just going to keep racking up more deaths until he surpasses Sojiro with his inhuman coldness and flagrant brutality? Sojiro would torture people for information and he _delighted_ in it and that’s where Hanzo’s heading, just think of Sojiro’s carcass, with the ribs flayed open like a butterfly’s wings. Regardless of the reason - no, _no_ , Genji didn’t even _know_ the reason. He had no answers. He was essentially kicked out of his home because of the selfishness of his brother and for _what?_

He’s saddled with a brother who can’t speak with him, help him, or do anything but apparently kill innocent souls. Genji clenches his fists, tightly. Now, he’s saddled with a brother who he feels obligated for some nostalgic, intangible reasons to uncurse, who may have just killed their only potential lead to uncurse said brother.

The anger in Genji had sparked at his brother’s irresponsible behavior, his unfair burdening of Genji, and it grew incandescently _blinding_ as he thought, over and over, that Sojiro was right. Hanzo had been the _perfect_ choice for successor, because he’d inherited his father inhuman cruelty. No one would run the clan into the ground better with an iron fist than a second Sojiro.

Genji swears, getting up to pace. He’s stuck in a hut, his brother just flew off - he knows, he _knows_ , his elder brother just _left_ Satya there, bleeding out, dying, or already dead - and fuck, he’s _stuck in a hut_. Little provisions, a potion that was meant for a brother who didn’t deserve it that was probably poisoning Genji by the minute, and an endless supply of anger. The ideal situation for the moment, really.

He sits back down on the bench, forcibly gentle. This is the one aspect that Genji had over Hanzo - he could better control his anger. It welled up inside him spitefully, gushing out between the chinks in the walls Genji’s trying to close around it. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Hanzo is his brother. Hanzo would do anything for him. Hanzo, the man who _wouldn’t_ lie to Sojiro, would lie for Genji, because he loved Genji.

Hanzo was the kind of man that would go against what he was raised to do, would go against everything and anyone, and even stand up to their father...for his brother.

Genji clenches and unclenches his fists a few times. The anger’s still there, but instead of a roaring flame that would consume him, it’s a spark. It’s radiating warmth is akin to the scale in his gi, which he now moves to pocket in the inrou, along with the silken fur.

Hanzo loves him still, he knows. Loves him despite their differences and the wide trench of jealousy and bitterness that threatens to tear them apart. His brother loves him. He would do the same for the younger Shimada. They were born into the same family and would die in the same family, whether their expiration date is today or in five hundred years. Despite Sojiro spoiling the Shimada name, they would both wear it proudly, like a mantle, until their dying breaths.

Genji unclenches his fist for the last time. Anger could be a good motivator, but it’s flame is blinding, incinerating all reason and purpose in its path. It isn’t the motivator that Genji needs right now. He couldn’t completely snuff the flame, it would still burn like a thorn in his heart, but he could do nothing to eviscerate it. It would remain, and Genji knows that this is better than just snuffing it out like a candle.

He would demand answers, when he feels as though he can’t go on anymore. The anger would be necessary at some point in the future, when there is nothing else but small kindling trying to keep the fire of his determination alive. This anger will eventually stoke that fire.

Genji sits and thinks, feeling himself cool off. He feels as though the iridescent cathedral room has something to do with this, somehow ties into this, but there’s too many key pieces missing. What he has are mere fragments, tiny specks of the large picture, and Genji is unable to piece them together.

If Symmetra is still alive, he would have to ask her where she sent him. Otherwise, he’s left speculating in the dark.

Hanzo loves him still, he thinks. He looks at the inrou, so beautiful, so very much his brother’s taste. This is maybe the one gift that Genji had ever given Hanzo that actually suited his brother. He runs his hand down it lovingly. The wood is smooth and careworn beneath his hand, and the gold leaf still manages to shine slightly in the dark den. Genji feels a smile tug at his lips, thinking of the history of the inrou.

It was something childish, really. Genji and Hanzo had had a row over something, the teen couldn’t remember now, but it had been something frivolous. Either way, that was the first time that Hanzo had refused to talk to him for days. Later on in their relationship, that had become more the norm than an oddity, but in those days, it was painfully crushing.

Genji had begged Sojiro to be allowed out into the city to get something so that Hanzo would talk to him again. At the time, he’d been surprised at Sojiro’s leniency. Now, he saw that Sojiro had simply wanted a whiny crying child out of his vicinity.

So Sojiro had released him easily with Oto, the brothers’ nanny. They’d went into town, Genji always highly enamored with the clamour and hubbub of people living everyday lives. Even the peasantry was interesting to him, and that would only grow with age. However, today was one of the first days he’d been allowed to go out.

He did what any cloistered kid would do with sudden overwhelming freedom - he ran wild. The whole day, elderly Oto struggled to keep up with him. His appetite with both food and talking and sights was insatiable. Genji could easily trace his choice of lovers back to this time: Hanamura still enhanced him, every time he snuck out. The town was his to prowl, and reminded him of freedom and rebellion and all the good memories he had of his childhood. This event would start that.

When the sun had almost gone down, elderly Oto had finally manage to settle an energetic Genji down. She tugged on his sleeve, urging them to go back to the yakuza’s mountain base. But then, Genji stopped in his tracks - he’d _forgotten_ Hanzo. He whipped his head around and all the shops were closed. Of course, those that were packing up would gladly wait on him if he requested him, but it bothered him down to the soles of his feet that he’d just forgotten his brother just like that.

Even if he’d grown up sheltered and the freedom had been too much - because it really had been - Hanzo wouldn’t have forgotten him. He would’ve stolidly purchased a gift, grimacing foully at the shopkeeper, before departing post-haste. Genji didn’t intend to scowl at any shopkeepers, but his brother’s sense of duty shames him.

So he stops in the nearest woodworking shop. Hanzo could and did have nearly every weapon that he desired. Sojiro always had him well-stocked and pampered in that regard, because any way that Sojiro could encourage his brother’s bloodlust he would. It was amazing that Hanzo had, up until turning into a dragon, retained a tight hold on his humanity.

But the woodworking shop was mostly empty when the young Shimada entered it. The owner was in the back, whittling a small dragon.

When he noticed Genji was looking over his wares, he didn’t budge. He let Genji look them over, pick them up. When he finally chose, only then did the stooped man stand up.

Genji tucked the inrou back under his arm. Hanzo would like this, he knew, because Genji didn’t.

Genji runs his hand over the inrou. They are both so different, and now that rift threatens to tear them apart even further. Now, he’s forced to calmly wait for Symmetra’s dead body to show up, all the while ultimately having to try to give Hanzo a no doubt incomplete potion with unknown consequences. But what else could he do?

Despite everything, Genji loves him, even with that spark of anger simmering. Hanzo’s eyes are different now, but there remained bits and pieces of Hanzo awash in those honeyed predatory eyes.

As Genji sets the inrou down, the roof above him creaks. He sits, unsure of whether or not to move, when suddenly - the entire roof caves in on itself, the sides absorbing the roof’s debris as it falls.

With it crashes Symmetra, and she hits the potion bench with a sickening crack. She’s pale beneath her bronze skin, but he’s relieved to find a sluggish pulse beneath her wrist. When Genji cradles her unconscious body in his hands, he’s not surprised to feel her lower half oddly limp. She’d more than likely broke her spine on the bench. What he is surprised to feel is a thick, wet sap suddenly ooze onto his leg.

When he looks down, he also notices that one of her legs is completely missing. In its absence, an odd substance oozes, plopping out of the wound. It’s opaque and a vibrant electric blue, and slimes out of her wound like jelly pus. Looking around the room, he finds her leg a little farther away, and grimaces.

The blood is weird, but gawking at it won’t help him save her. Her eyelashes are fluttering, her breathing is shallow and fast, and she opens her eyes. They’re glazed in the sockets, but retain a small amount of lucidity.

“My workbench,” She gasps, “Bring me the leg and the thread and needle next to the cauldron.”

He sets her down gently, and scoops up her leg. Despite the caving, it’s in decent condition, but the torn flesh and bone protrude from the top. It also oozes the same blue sap from the top, confirming his suspicion that it’s her blood. But he doesn’t wait to analyze it, he dumps the leg next to her body as he scrambles to find the thread and needle.

When he scoops them both up, she asks him to find the thick scissors, and when Genji hurries back with that, she reaches out to him.

“Flip me over,” She snarls, “And thread the needle.”

Genji complies with only a moment’s hesitation, and waits for her next order. Her breathing is more faint as a pool of aquamarine jelly shines under the light of the morning sun. “Slit open my back, Sparrow, find the broken vertebrae, and sew the pieces together with the thread.”

She says it like she’s telling someone how to tie a knot, or fix her morning tea. Her voice is still strong and confident, and her hand comes to his leg when he balks at the idea. He hesitates, but her hand is sure on his leg. “Genji,” She says slowly, her voice quivering now around the edges, “If you don’t, I will die right here. Nothing else you can do will save me. And with my death, you lose your only chance at uncursing Hanzo.” Her grip is suddenly strong on him, “Just do it. Slit me open, find the cord between the bones that are broken, sew it together. I refuse to believe that any son of Sojiro’s, golden heir or not, would be a _coward_ and _afraid_ of such a simple task.”

Genji snarls at her words. Even while on her deathbed, Satya finds a way to needle him - but she is right. Without her, he would lose any lead on uncursing Hanzo.

He draws his wakizashi. Quickly, trying to spare her pain, he gashes open Symmetra’s back. She huffs, quietly, but she makes no other sound.

He digs into her back, spreading open the wound. He can’t see, her blood is too opaque and vicious and she screams - but he’s somehow not worried at all. Instead, most likely because of his familial background, her blood fascinates him. Her flesh is red like any other meat, but it shines with a teal sheen in the light. It’s grotesquely like a work of art, like seeing glittering meat in a butcher shop. He’s fascinated, he wants to plunge deeper, but she moans lowly and he snaps back to reality.

The sap-blood oozes out of her, streaking her dark skin. She moans again and her breathing shutters as Genji finally finds the spot - and he is thankful that Symmetra has suddenly passed out, as he draws the thread. He cuts a little deeper first, severing the protective spinal membrane, and ignores the gush of vicious clear spinal fluid.  As he threads the needle, he notices the skein looks like an ordinary thread, but as Genji holds it, his hands actually go almost completely numb with tingling, like pins and needles. Cursing, he stitches the area around the vertebrae in a repeating side to side V pattern, looping it through the hooks on the back of the spine. He tries to stitch the cord between as much as he can, before he stitches her back up, and is amazed when her breath hitches and she coughs, rolling over and falling off the bench.

She groans, and Genji hoists her up - but the wound on her back is gone, sealed shut, as if it had never been there. However, her amputated leg was still bleeding profusely, and she grunted.

“Prop me up, Genji, and hand me the scissors,” She harshly barks, ignoring the blood jelly leaking out of her now smashed and swelling nose. Genji complies and he watches as she trims much of the torn flaps of skin off her leg. Even though it had been a mostly clean cut, she sheared up the edges on both her amputated leg and her thigh, and as she does so, Genji gets a chance to look closer.

All around her thigh and leg, even along her hands, arms, and fingertips, are little pockmarked scars. They are like little indents, and Genji realizes she’s done this before, countless times. The scars are like little stitching holes, indents of skin that had been drawn together hastily to stem the flow of blood. That explains why she’s so matter-of-fact about this. It isn’t the first time, and more than likely, not the last.

But the skein of thread is almost gone now, as it had been barely layered with enough to cover the tiny bobbin in entirety with the white thread. She would have enough to sew this leg, but that would be most of the extent.

She finally drops the scissors a little unceremoniously, and stares at him expectantly. He looks at the leg, noticing the frayed bone, and tries his best to line it up.

Her face is pallid and clammy, and her leg is cold in his hands. She tries to say something, but instead, chooses to sew up and reattach her leg to her raw, bloody, slick stump of a thigh like it’s her day job.

The thread glints a warm golden glow against her wound, oddly gorgeous. Genji watches as the muscles knit together around the threads, then slowly, spreading outwards, knit like a sweater between the stitches.

Symmetra groans softly, her forehead dotted with beads of sweat like drops of rain. “My bones are still broken,” She husks out, “But I have potions that will make them heal.” Satya pauses, catching her breath, as Genji kneels there, coated in sticky viscera up to his elbows and waist. The puddle that had been on the floor was once again evaporated - Genji had no doubt, now, that Symmetra’s den was absorbing her blood, much like it had the potions. Fascinating.

“Sparrow,” She sighs out his name tiredly, “Grab me the green potion on the fifth shelf from the left, second row from the top. The vial is thin and the glass is delicate.” Genji does so, and when he hands it to her, she uncorks it and gulps it down in one go.

She levels her eyes at him, and they are impossibly dark, like two black holes in her head. Genji knows he will have to pay for his brother’s rudeness at some point. Satya was not one that would forgive and forget. He would have to pay, because Hanzo could not pay whatever price point she would be asking for.

He lowers his eyes, and looks down at the floor. His anger flares at Hanzo again, now that Symmetra would somehow live. Genji would pay, because he loves his brother.

He kneels, then places his palms out on the floor. Prostrating himself, as far as he can possibly go, he bows at her feet.

The anger grows within him, but he apologies, over and over, until her foot twitches and lifts his chin up.

He looks into her dead eyes, ashen like her tree cemetery, and watches as she laughs. It’s soft and weak, but it bites him anyways.

“I will finish the potion regardless, because it is too expensive and rare of ingredients to let go to waste.” She murmurs, and Genji feels as though his soul is being consumed by her lifeless being. He notes that she didn’t say that she will do so because Genji saved her life, or because she’s doing this because of an old debt to Sojiro, which he highly suspects. She would have no other reason to go this far for them, especially in the face of such flagrant disrespect. Symmetra says nothing else, merely limps over to her cauldron. She adds a few more ingredients with her usual measured precision, stirs a few times, and then speaks:

“We will wait for Hanzo to come back, as the potion is complete.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost 1,000 hits, almost 50 kudos...more than I could've ever dreamed. Thank you for all of your support, it humbles me and I'm perpetually in awe. Hopefully this chapter moves things along, because I'm pretty sick of Symmetra. Not that I don't like her, it's just...ugh. I want to get to sexy sweet-talkin cowboys. I just want to get to sexy flirting!! But the gore is important. I hope my foreshadowing is actually working lol I don't have anyone taste-test this fic before I post it, which probably leads to a ton of inconsistencies and whatnot. Oh well, it's a passion project that I'm proud I'm sticking with.
> 
> If anyone is curious, Symmetra broke L-2 in her lumbar vertebrae. Also, dogeza! Dogeza is when one prostrates themselves deeply before another, usually in deference, as a deep apology and to ask for a favor in a way.
> 
> As always, comments, kudos, hits, all that good stuff is appreciated. Without it, this fic wouldn't have even come close to 10,000 words. You can always reach me on my shabby, discount icon-less porn twitter @SugarBabyGenji.


	7. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, we're getting somewhere now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None, at least that I can think of.

Genji finds that he can’t stop staring at Symmetra. She is a dead woman, brought back to life by what appears to be simply a skein of white thread. His hands, although cleaned while waiting, are still stained with hunks of meat and weird, viscous blood-jelly.

She takes his staring in stride, simply ignoring him. He doesn’t know what to do. There’s so many questions on the tip of his tongue, so much confusion, and above it all - he’s just really at a loss for words. What question to ask? Is there a limit? If he doesn’t ask the right way, will she refuse to give him the answers he wants?

Why is her blood jelly? What is the white tower, and why did she send him there? Why does she persist in helping them, even with little personal gain on her end of the bargain?

Why is she breathing, alive, and clearly able to function?

Sojiro had  _ never _ had powers like that, and definitely not from the thinnest, most delicate spool of thread Genji’s ever seen in his life. Sojiro had loved theatrics and gigantic overly dramatic displays of power. This thread, this magic...it’s going right over Genji’s head. He needs a grip on the situation. He chooses to clean his wakizashi, trying to not look too hard at the blue viscera still globbed on the blade.

“You may ask a few questions, but I may not answer them in a way you like. Be sure that you are ready, Sparrow, to face the truth.” Satya finally intones, appearing to reach the limit of her patience for his staring. But where could he begin?

“You’re alive.” Genji states, and Symmetra chooses not to answer that question. It’s more of a statement really. “You’re alive, but how? How can you function? Your back  _ broke _ , I felt it, I dug into it on your request. And yet you stand in front of me,” His eyes glance desperately at her severed leg, still raw and oozing, “Mostly whole. You can walk and talk and sit and breathe. You should be dead of blood loss.”

She waits for him to finish, and he realizes he’s panting. He’s panicking, and it’s hard. It’s too much for a minute, and Genji viciously fights to get himself under control. Just focus on the cleaning of his wakizashi. Don’t think about what’s on the blade, just firmly wipe it with the old peasantry clothes he’d stole in the beginning. Towards the blade, back again, making sure to firmly clean around the handle. That’s where the viscera would stick and cause the blade to be reluctant in being unsheathed.

Panicking won’t give him answers, but he can’t help it. He fidgets and almost slices off his own thumb.

Satya is staring at him with her black hole eyes. Be ready for the truth. Genji is about as far as he’ll ever be from the truth, but she knows he won’t rest without it. Whether or not the rest after will be restful, and not nightmares from carving out her back meat like a cut of tough meat...that would be left to how much Genji could compartmentalize the act.

It wouldn’t be the first time he will have nightmares about gore, and most definitely not the last.

She waits a little longer, until he almost cuts his thumb off for the second time. Symmetra is patient, but it’s the kind of patronizing patience a mother gives a rebellious child. But can she really blame him, look down on him for not dealing well with this?

Genji might come from a yakuza background, but he never participated in the maiming. It was always Hanzo that had to do that, because Genji was “unsuited for the delicate art”, of which Sojiro meant brutally torturing, maiming, and killing another human being. This marks the first time he’s ever purposefully mutilated someone else, even if it was to save her life.

But yes, Satya is blaming him, he knows. He can tell by how cold she is, how she seems like a frigid island in a blazing hot den. She seems colder, even more removed, than she had. He feels like if he is to reach out, and brush his thumb along her cheek, he would come back with frostbite and searing icy hot pain.

“I am clearly not dying,” She finally enunciates, once Genji makes the wise decision to stop trying to clean his wakizashi, but only after he cuts himself. “The thread is magical, as you might have guessed.” Or not, she leaves unsaid, but it hangs in the air contemptuously unsaid. “I will not tell you the details of the magic behind the thread, nor the story behind it. We do not have the time and I don’t believe I owe you any of it in the first place.” Symmetra purses her lips, “But I will tell you, it is from an old friend.” She takes a deep breath, “I shall allow you one more question, out of my well of generosity. Other than that, you may simply speculate all you like, for I refuse to answer anything else.”

Genji mulls over her non-answer, because while it does answer at least one suspicion, he feels his cheeks heat at her underestimation of his intelligence. But he can’t get distracted over her slights. He needs her information and cooperation, and that need outweighs any sort of personal feelings he has over the Witch of the Wilds. His hands were numb when he handled the thread, but how much of that exactly was its brilliant magical powers, and how much of it was sheer shock and nerves at such a dire situation?

He looks over the loosely wound bobbin. It sits so unassuming upon her desk, almost empty of its silken treasure. If Genji were to break into this place, the thread he would undoubtedly leave behind. It just doesn’t have any of that sort of shimmering, mysterious nature to the natural eye that normal magic did.

Maybe it was made by Sojiro, long ago. Maybe when Sojiro first found his magic. If Sojiro’s brutal awakening of Hanzo’s powers were like his own, it would make sense. The magic suddenly flowed from behind it’s dam, bursting out in a tsunami all at once, once that wall was breached. According to Hanzo, it felt like his entire body was on fire, and that he was going to die of nothing else rather than sheer amounts of pain, like every single nerve he had was working overtime. Maybe Sojiro had channeled that into making the thread, and it would then link with why Symmetra had it.

He looks back to Symmetra, and notices she’s finished cleaning the blood off her tunic from her nose. “Why is your blood jelly?” Genji asks, but then changes his mind, assuming he has a limit on questions. That one isn’t as important. It would be far more prudent to ask something relevant to Hanzo’s curse, or the white room. Or why she even was helping them in the first place. “What was the place you sent me to when you left? I’ve never been there.”

She laughs, but it’s cold. “I sent you nowhere, child. Next question.”

He has only one question left, and he has no proper answer to any of them. Questioning Symmetra was beginning to wear on his patience, what little hadn’t been shocked to death from his impromptu surgery. The white room is not her doing - or so she says. Looking into her face is like looking into a void, he’ll get no answers there.

Feeling frustrated, he sits up straighter. “I’ll combine my next two questions, and you can choose whether or not you actually attempt to answer them.” He fights to keep the bite out of his voice, but he fails. “Why are you helping me and my brother, especially in light of such a grave disrespect upon your being - and what does this potion even do? You haven’t given me any answers, despite saying you are helping us. I don’t even know  _ why _ you are choosing to help us, and I’m forced into a situation where I feed my brother some backwater wild witch’s potion on the off-chance it’ll actually help him, or continue onwards with absolutely no leads and poorer off than I am now! You probably don’t even have any answers, you just want to toy with me.”

She examines her nails as he talks and he feels his blood boil even higher. She isn’t going to answer him, and Genji stands up abruptly. Even if she does answer him, it’s going to be half-truths and deflections again. He doesn’t want more questions, just answers, and he can’t stand to deal with her duplicitous toying any longer.

He packs up his things, and Symmetra waits until he’s almost gone and she says:

“It was your father,” She declares harshly, and when the young Shimada turns, he finally sees emotion in those soulless eyes. It’s anger, icy and ruthless and hard, shining like her cold, frigid magic, like her oily viscous blood. “Your father did me a favor, many years ago. It was how you and I met.” She stands, marching up to him. “You’re right, Genji, I don’t do this for you, or for your bitter, prideful, disaster of a brother. I do this for Sojiro, who is no longer with us.”

Her words become exponentially more clipped and measured, to the point where they are like daggers piercing into Genji’s skin, but she continues onwards - “I will not dishonor your father, or the good deeds he has done for me. If I could, I would positively  _ adore _ dropping you and your brother in the middle of the wilderness, with nowhere to go, no supplies, no leads, and you waste away and die while your brother forgets you ever existed. But instead, I will honor Sojiro. I will tell you, foolish child, where to go, and what my potion does. You think I am cruel for toying with you, but I was generous enough to let you in my door, where little other living beings have ever been welcomed into, just  _ forced  _  by my magic into.” Chills run down his spine, but he stands strong, despite her words flaying into him like barbed wire.

Her face is grotesque, mixed up with anger and magic and small flecks of dried blood and spit. She comes right up to him and slaps him, hard, across the face. Genji holds his hand up to his cheek, and feels the blood seeping onto his palm.

Her nails. They are sharp, and cut into his skin like it’s nothing more than butter. He snarls at her, but Satya doesn’t even care, she just continues. “If I do not administer this potion, your brother will no longer be yours. You haven’t even noticed: he’s not Hanzo anymore, just some wild beast. Sure, he has moments of lucidity, but mostly, his bestial side will take over until there’s nothing left. I’m sure you want to be pinned down and fucked by a beast every night that was once your beloved Hanzo, but he will eventually bisect your body and leave your corpse in the woods for wild animals to eat, and at the end of all that? He won’t even know. He’ll become totally bestial, unable to feel anything for you other than a brief consideration on whether you’re predator or prey to him.”

She finally runs out of steam, and pulls over her shifting sand cloak to wipe her nails off in. “If you don’t trust what I say, and you wish to risk it - by all means, choose your own death. In the end you’ll be a nice sexual meal, then tossed aside like a broken toy by your brother. Write your own fate, Genji - it matters not what end you meet, whether your brother drinks the potion and you both venture to Overwatch, or you die bitter and crushed alone in the woods, it will not affect my life in the least.”

Genji sits back down. Be sure you are ready for the truth, she’d said. Genji had expected more of the same half-baked truths, more lying by omission, not brutal honesty. But even if isn’t pleasant to hear...he needs to hear it. He needs to know the truth.

He gulps down his pride and whispers, “Do you know how he got cursed in the first place?”

But true to her word, Symmetra says nothing else. She sits still like the dead on her bench, her eyes once again flat like dead fish. He wants to press her, but he knows he would get nothing else from her: she had revealed too much already.

They wait in heavy silence, until there’s a particular whistling of the winds, signalling Hanzo’s approach. He lands, curling around the open hole in the roof, far more smoothly than he had previously.

When Genji looks into his brother’s golden eyes, they shine, like they always have since he’d been transformed. The feeling of literal attraction, that gut feeling wrenching him like a hook towards Hanzo, it’s still there, too. But Satya, she is right, despite her way of relaying the information. There is already so little Hanzo left in that gaze that Genji feels ashamed he didn’t see it earlier.

Even though Hanzo had been cursed about a week ago, Genji had been too wrapped up in his own world to notice. Sure, Hanzo in the abstract had been the focus of his attention, but real, physical Hanzo had been brushed to the wayside. To be honest...it’s because Genji’s afraid. He’s afraid of this form, afraid of the attraction in his gut, of how gorgeous and beautiful the form is, how much of Hanzo is actually left inside.

He knows without even thinking the potion is their only hope. Symmetra wouldn’t care either way if they lived or died, her help is already up on offer. To her, she’s been made good on her promise to Sojiro.

Plus, she’s already given them a new lead - Overwatch. Genji doesn’t know where it is, or even what it is, but he knows that’s all he’s getting from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've hit 50 kudos, and 1,000 hits - this chapter is to celebrate that. I pumped it out and finally next chapter, we disembark for Overwatch...wherever that may be.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and especially thank you to those who comment, kudo, and just in general decide to give this fic some love. I appreciate each and every one of you! You can reach me at @Sugarbabygenji on Twitter.


	8. Mountains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At last, we leave Symmetra's hut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None.

They wait for Hanzo to come back in stifled silence. Genji chews on some dried plums that Symmetra had given him, after hearing his stomach growl loudly. She’d given him some more for his inrou, but she still refused to talk to him, her eyes still black as ash.

That’s okay with Genji. He doesn’t need to talk to fill the silence. After being with Hanzo’s new form over the past few days, he found that silence, while originally disarming, really wasn’t all that different from the normal Hanzo. His brother had been a man of few words to begin with, unless he was having an argument. The lack of words is actually quite normal, now that Genji begins to think of it that way.

It’s just Hanzo being Hanzo. It’s just Symmetra being Symmetra. She had given them both more and less than he’d bargained for. A new lead - he wonders if Overwatch is magical, or whether it has to do with the white room. The younger Shimada ponders over it while he chews on the delicious plum chips.

If Overwatch really _is_ magical, whomever or whatever it is, it has to be foreign. Sojiro had not once mentioned it, and Genji had had a quite thorough magic history education. Whether or not he’d actually retained any of Sojiro’s teachings is a quite different matter - the name Overwatch doesn’t prick his memory. Which means…

Sojiro’s magical history was either flawed with gaps in it, or Overwatch is something more recent that Sojiro would have no time for learning about, as busy as he was running the clan into the ground. Genji smiles sourly. It is most likely something recently formed that Sojiro simply didn’t care enough about. After all, his father was all about the grandiose, the larger-than-life. Small organizations that didn’t hold much of a threat were of little matter to him, and were nothing more than the comings and goings of the tide.

Especially if they were foreign.

He lifts his head up and rubs the back of his neck, sighing. He’s already exhausted, but he has to think about where to go next. Symmetra would only tolerate their company for so long; Genji could not sleep here.

Shuttering his eyes closed, he tries hard to think. Where to go next? If he is looking for somewhere foreign, the closest city that would be chock full of foreigners would be the city of Kogarashi. It’s a bustling hub, full of foreigners and neo riche Japanese alike trying to profit off of the city’s importance as a pit stop on a well-travelled trade route. Genji’s never been to Kogarashi, but he knows that Sojiro was not fond of Kogarashi. “It stinks to the high heavens,” Sojiro would say, “Full of foreigners and a magical wasteland.”

For Genji, it sounds perfect. The Shimada clan would likely have little roots there, if any, that would be quickly be withering away with Sojiro’s death and a headless yakuza. No doubt someone had stepped in, but it would take time to build power. How much time the two brothers really had is in question, but Genji does not intend to linger.

He snaps his eyelids open when he hears the rustling of Symmetra’s tree leaves, most of them likely reducing to ash on the wind. Hanzo is quickly approaching, apparently coming back after either managing to rein in his beast side, or getting over his hurt pride at his childish outburst.

Genji taps his fingers on his leg, now eying the potion that still smoked in the cauldron. The mist that overflows from it is even thicker now, and he’s wary of what the side effects may be. He doesn’t dare sneak a glance at Satya, preferring to not see the wrath in her dark eyes burn with the intensity of the white hot summer sun.

Hanzo curls around the top of  her den, head snaking in. She address him, “Beast. Drink this down to the last drop.”

Genji snorts at her curt address of his brother. Does she want a second go at having her leg taken off?

But surprisingly, Hanzo drinks the potion. This time, the younger Shimada sneaks a glance at Satya, whose eyes are burning holes into Hanzo’s. They’re locked in a staring contest, as Hanzo gulps down her potion. Genji’s fingers twitch, and before either of them notice, the life threads that were sitting on the table are now resting in his gi, numbing his entire core down to his very soul.

He doesn’t put it back, only blinks nonchalantly as Satya turns to him. She wastes no time: “It is done. I recommend you leave my hut at once, lest I return the favor your brother bestowed upon me.” Genji blinks again, suddenly realizing how all the potions along the wall have been shivering, and are now starting to clatter with their bumping into each other. He glances back at Satya once, seeing how Hanzo is still breathing and appears quite well, and marvels at her now glowing eyes, that weird alien blue rimming her black irises like a lunar eclipse’s corona.

Well, that resolves whatever doubts Genji has over when to depart. He picks up his inrou with a little effort, and yelps when Hanzo decides to pick him up by the back of his gi. Genji fumbles as the life threads almost fall out of his gi, managing somehow to catch them before they almost hit Symmetra on the head.

He quickly stuffs the life threads into his inrou when Hanzo deposits him gently upon the ground, before dismantling himself from Satya’s den. The roof greedily swallows up the exposed space, and somehow manages to look denser, more foreboding, now that Genji isn’t inside. More than likely, this is Satya’s way of warning them to not come back.

  
Genji’s okay with that. He absent-mindedly pats Hanzo’s snout while fishing out a dried plum. While chewing on it, he looks over Hanzo.

His wiry body seems exactly the same, except his scales shine even brighter. Little rainbows refract off them in the late afternoon sun, and Genji watches them sparkle with satisfaction. He couldn’t get Hanzo uncursed himself, but he could take him places to help. Genji could lead Hanzo back to humanity. In a way, it’s extremely liberating to be able to choose their own destinies for once.

Genji nudges Hanzo’s snout with his head, stroking him for just a while longer. That pull is there, but far less, and Genji is inclined to indulge it, and stand like this for a little longer. He’s quite exhausted and could use a long, restful blackout, but now is not the time.

Yawning, he straps the inrou back together, thread safely in tow, and straps it around Hanzo’s neck. There would be things to puzzle out later, but he could do that while they were flying en route to Kogarashi.

“Hanzo,” He murmurs sleepily, trying to blink the sleep from his eyes. Hanzo’s eyes are wide when he tilts his head to acknowledge Genji, and the younger smiles at how Hanzo-like the gesture is. “We’re going to Kogarashi. Father hated the city with a passion, it should be safe from our fam-…” He hesitates only a little, before charging onwards, “The Shimada clan. Most likely you won’t be able to stay with me, but I’ll only stay there a little bit. Just to see where this Overwatch organization is, then we can fly there once we know.” Hanzo blinks along with Genji’s nods in agreement. “So let’s get going, we’re wasting daylight, and maybe even someone in Kogarashi is magical enough to help you.”

Genji doubts it, but the thought tempts him to blindly hope. Kogarashi _is_ full of foreigners after all, but Sojiro’s words echo in his head: _filthy city. No magic._ But how long had Sojiro been avoiding Kogarashi? It might’ve completely changed in the time since Sojiro had been there. Genji severely doubts his late father’s detestation of the city is based on magic, as Sojiro was a quite petty man, and more than likely there was a lady more beautiful than Kogarashi’s ocean view that stole his heart and jilted the twisted sorcerer. It seems too personal, the way Sojiro would ramble on about it whenever someone talked about going to Kogarashi. The city was infamous for its sights and cuisine, and at least among the underground was valuable for its pearl mining. It would’ve been a worthy acquisition for Sojiro, but the Shimada’s leader had only scorned the place and wished nothing more for it go up in flames.

So go the two Shimadas would to Kogarashi. Jilted lovers awash in the city of not, Genji is kind of excited to visit a city so far away from their home. Hanamura had been the stomping grounds for Genji, and were filled with excitement in the dark pits of night, but even those had grown too restrictive, too well-known for a wanderlust soul like Genji’s. As a young kid, he’d never gone anywhere without his father and a well-armed guard, so even the new places he did go were somehow worse than being confined to Hanamura alone.

He pats Hanzo’s muzzle once more, and delights in the fact that Hanzo nuzzles him back. Finally, a connection. It’s almost like old Hanzo is back again. He’s silently eternally grateful for Symmetra’s help, even if she is a frigid, terrifying sorceress.

“Alright Aniki. Ready to go?” And Genji smiles when Hanzo nods. He feels invigorated even if his body is tired. A lead, finally. One that’s solid, or at least, more solid than he’s really had in the past.

Hanzo leans his long, thin neck down gracefully, allowing Genji to saddle himself up in the hollow behind Hanzo’s skull and his neck. He pets the hair that’s snipped jaggedly short from the rest, and chuckles. He’s so glad to be finished with Satya and all her tricks and games. Genji ruffles the mane fondly as Hanzo coils his body tight, winding it tighter and tighter, until he launches himself gracefully from the ground.

Only to have them quickly come crashing back down. Hanzo crashes through trees that groan like dying soldiers as he breaks them with his large body. Hanzo chokes when he hits the ground as he swallows a massive amount of dirt and coughs a weak gasping hack that sounds more like a sigh than anything. He tilts his head, dumping Genji off him unceremoniously, before looking skyward. Genji sits on the ground, still slightly offended, as his brother coils tight again.

When Hanzo ends up snout first in the dirt again, his stomach drops. The potion must’ve affected Hanzo’s magic in some way, meaning...they’re essentially stranded in the middle of a very angry witch’s forest, with no viable nearby sources of food or water, with a flightless Hanzo and a pissed off Genji.

Genji wants to run back to Symmetra’s hut and murder her. He angrily combs through the inrou, finding the glittering stone in there created from her magic. He wants to crush it, throw it, and scream all at the same time, but then he has a thought. Nothing ever comes without a price. He now has his brother back, but without his magic. So be it; he would make it through with Hanzo, through thick and thin.

He closes up the inrou, gently placing the stone back instead with shaking fingers. Throwing a stone or trying to murder a very vengeful and powerful witch would not solve his problems. Symmetra didn’t know how to uncurse Hanzo, and murdering her wouldn’t make their situation any better, given if he even could get into her den. No, he would have to take that anger out somewhere else, or redirect it.

Genji still kicks a stone in their path as they try to make it out of the forest, sulking. Nothing ever comes without a price. Genji has to be ready for the truth at all costs, at all times. Symmetra hadn’t said so explicitly, but she had most likely known the potion would neuter his brother’s abilities, at least to some extent. She hadn’t warned them, most likely due to the fact it didn’t occur to her that this would be vital information, especially after Hanzo bit her leg off.

Genji still loves his brother, even though he makes rash decisions. It’s quite possible Symmetra tampered with the potion to the extent to specifically make it do this to them - but he refuses to dwell on the pettiness of others. They would make it through, he keeps telling himself. Through thick of thin, hell or high water, Hanzo would walk through fire for him. Genji would do the same.

They travel down the way they came and Genji chooses to climb a tree. It isn’t the most comfortable of sleeping spots, but he’s had worse before, and night is quickly settling in. Testing the branches for holding his weight, he feels comfortable when he chooses the tree next to Hanzo. Looking down, he sees they’re both split from the same trunk, and smiles tiredly. If it would hold Hanzo’s weight, it would hold his.

He sleeps until morning, rousing eventually from Hanzo gently nipping his arm. Nearly falling out of the tree as he wakes up, he checks that the inrou is still around his brother’s neck. Thankful it’s still there and they’re still in one piece, he skitters down from the tree, waiting as Hanzo does the same.

Something dawns on Genji, and he stops as they clear the forest. He turns to Hanzo, who stops and eyes him. “Aniki, how are you going to hunt? There’s definitely not enough food in the inrou for you. I can give you some of the dried fish, but there most likely won’t be enough for even just me on the way to Kogarashi.” Squirrels, too, would most likely not be enough food. Even if Hanzo finds a whole den of Amami hares, it most likely wouldn’t be enough to sate his appetite.

Hanzo nudges Genji’s shoulder with his nose, then turns his head towards the east. Mountain ranges crested with the morning sun blot out jagged lines in the horizon. Kogarashi lay to the Northeast, but Genji furrows his brow. Hanzo knows where Kogarashi is, why would he point towards the mountain ranges nearby?

But then, Genji remembers many lesser clan members travelling to the mountains and bringing back stories of bears and leopard cats. There would be all sorts of larger game up in the mountains where not as many humans decided to live.

They would take an indirect route to Kogarashi, skirting the base of the mountains so that Hanzo could hunt as needed. While this circuitous route would take them longer, they would eventually get to Kogarashi, and get some much needed answers.

  
For now, Genji waits for just a minute longer, taking in the sight of the sunrise above the mountains with his brother at his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Kogarashi, the city whose name literally translates to 'leaf-withering wind', or better translated, means: the withering wind that comes at the start of winter and blows the last leaves off of the trees.
> 
> Thank you as always for reading. I appreciate any and all feedback and deeply apologize for not only the late chapter but the length and the fact it's sort of filler. I hit a massive road block in terms of writing this, as I have it all loosely planned out but I was stumbling on how to connect the 'bay city' as I named it in my head to the current place in Walking with Fire. Also, casual title drops. I'm here for them.
> 
> Alternate title of this chapter: Genji Smiles A Lot at Hanzo lol


	9. Journey to the City of the Winds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trek to Kogarashi. Genji has a lot of time to think about what to do, where he's going, and what he'll do once he arrives in the bay city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Rated M at the very least, potentially E for some smuy. *Very* minor death mention. Genji being a complete ignorant asshole about how wilderness works.
> 
> The Kajiki constellation, or translated, Marlin or Swordfish, is an actual constellation. It is known as the Dorado constellation in English. It consists of three stars in a mostly straight line with a fourth star kind of off at an angle. It's a pretty simple constellation, but I like those.

The route through the mountains is not at all what Genji is expecting. Once hitting the base of the mountains after a half day of walking, they’re faced with a large, looming forest shoring up against the banks of the mountain. Unable to truly go around, Genji fishes out his wakizashi, and begins cutting a path in the brush for them, wherever he can.

They shamble along, Genji feels almost aimlessly, keeping Kogarashi to their Northeast. Kogarashi is nestled partially along a cliff, and atop the massive plateau of land is a large shrine, with twisting, elegant gold leafed spires twinkling brilliantly in the midday sun. While Genji couldn’t quite make out the entirety of their brilliance, the pillars would serve well as landmarks.

They’re on the windward side of the mountain, and the rains immediately slow their journey considerably. Hanzo lumbers alongside Genji, and he can feel his brother starting to get antsy. It’s more than likely that Hanzo feels vulnerable without his ability to fly, as his long body gets caught on all sorts of branches and large rocks as he stumbles along. His body is not meant to be scraped along the ground gracelessly; Genji can feel the frustration and even pain from having his body bashed and bruised.

He looks up at the sky occasionally as he walks. Sojiro had taught him, briefly, about stars and cartography. It hadn’t been interesting to Sojiro, but Genji...Genji had taken to it like a fish in water. The stars spoke to him and made him feel something so beyond what he could ever experience on this earth. He felt a deep connection with them, and thankfully had taken to learning more about them despite all of Sojiro’s scoffing. 

Hanzo likewise had thought they were silly, trivial; but he’d scoffed at superstitions and anything that fell between his mentally defined line of magic and non-magic. There was no room for mysticism in his brother’s black and white view of the world, but Genji himself had longing and desire for nothing more than to learn everything there was to know about the things that fell in the grey, like constellations and heavenly magic, divination and dream-casting. The black and white parts of magic and non-magic things - they were all already explored. Nearly every mage or non-mage had some sort of stake on either the black or white side, but very few dared to tread the gray path.

If Genji was magical at all, he’d always wished to follow that grey path. Going where no one else had dared to go, treading the line between what normal mages considered mere frivolous folklore and sheer insanity. Despite all of his magiclessness, he’d still felt that connection to the  _ beyond _ , to the  _ stars _ , and so, he’d studied in secret, alone and at night. He’d never even told Hanzo, although he knows Hanzo suspected it. Hanzo seemed to always know him, be able to read him, no matter what he was trying to say.

The forest around them is exceedingly dense. Unless he wanted to scale the mountain on the regular basis, he would need to use the stars to guide them. The rainclouds would hopefully clear at night, getting blown by the ocean air or by the mountain itself. There are often storms in Hanamura due to these mountains, turning the paved streets into oozing muddy slush between worn cobblestones.

If Genji remembers correctly from the one time in his life where he actually applied himself, to the North of Hanamura lies the constellation of Kajiki, the Marlin. Symmetra lives to the Northwest of Hanamura, so they would need to keep travelling Northeast and follow Kajiki to guide them to Kogarashi.

He wonders how often Hanzo needs to hunt. The brush is less dense here, and he glances up at the sky again. It’s nearly sunset, he should try to make camp.

It’s more than likely he’ll have to climb a tree again, as there’s more than likely night predators. While Hanzo may be the largest thing in the forest, he would have to hunt at some point, leaving Genji to fend for himself.

Genji’s never been in the wilderness, not like this. What little he knows is from sleeping in trees as a boy, after Hanzo dared him to climb them and he was too scared to come down.

What he’s learned so far: he hates nature, and really can’t  _ wait _ to get to Kogarashi. There’s bugs that fly into his eyes, rain that falls almost continuously and mists oddly during the time when it isn’t, and the ground is marshy and boggy and thick with rain and bugs and it grabs at his ankles, often times getting him stuck. He can’t wait for a nice bath and comfortable bed in Kogarashi.

He climbs the tree with ease, silently thanking Hanzo whom he notes isn't with him anymore. Despite it being almost sundown, the younger Shimada isn’t too worried. Hanzo’s nose is more than likely strong enough to find him, especially given he hadn’t bathed since he left the Shimada castle.

Genji pulls out the inrou, looking at the gold leafing in the dying light. He couldn’t go to Kogarashi and declare his name. Genji isn’t ashamed of where he comes from, or who he is - but Kogarashi is not a place where Shimadas are well-received going off of Sojiro’s infuriated bitterness over the city. Some people may still recognize him, and he would have to deal with that as it came. For now, he would need an alibi, someone that he knows in real life enough to make it believable.

He swings his leg on the branch idly, scarfing down a few plums and some dried fish. He looks forward to food,  _ real _ food - although the cuisine in Kogarashi is unlikely to be like anything he’s ever had before. Seafood, sure, but the mainly foreigner dominated city would more than likely hold many culinary treats and surprises for him.

But right, back to an alibi. And what would he do with Hanzo, his beloved brother? He couldn’t take a  _ dragon _ into a  _ city _ . One step at a time, he reminds himself, as he quickly climbs down to drink from a nearby stream, rinse off his face, and then after relieving himself a ways off. Genji climbs back up into the tree, leaving his shoes to swing futilely on a nearby branch, knowing they won’t dry. He’s still going to try, though, because wet shoes are the worst feeling in the world.

The issue Genji’s coming across is that he really didn’t know anybody outside the clan. They were tightly knit and seldom allowed outsiders that Genji couldn’t understand a single word they said, let alone their name. But...then a thought occurs to him, and he nearly falls off his tree branch with the way it smacks into him.

He knew one family that wasn’t related to the clan, at least, not enough that anyone would know. Oto, his nanny, and her small grandson, Kai.

He could take on the name Kai. He’d loved the kid way back when, although their age difference back then had made it hard on Kai. He’d wanted to play with Genji, but Genji had refused many times, even sometimes going so far as to agree and then ditch the child somewhere in the massive castle whenever he found an opportunity.

Kai, the only kid that was even younger than Genji. It had been...quite a long while since Genji remembered Kai. He hadn’t really wanted to, for a whole myriad of reasons.

Genji scrubs at his face. He doesn’t want to remember Kai, but...he had no one else he could take. Oto’s name is laughable at best on him, he would have to be many decades older to pull that off. The name  _ Kai _ in itself is quite young and would suit him.

He sighs, fiddling with his wakizashi. Kai had been a sweet kid, with a life ended quite too soon by the yakuza. Maybe he could honor Kai’s spirit, probably help the child from haunting him in his old days.

At the time, Genji hadn’t thought anything of Kai’s disappearance. But as he opened his eyes to the world around him...at how Oto’s wrinkles seemed deeper and deeper until they were canyons on her small face, about how she smiled less and less, about how quiet the castle seemed with Kai’s boisterous voice…until Oto herself disappeared, too, not long after.

He realized how wrong it felt. How  _ ominous _ it felt. What it was really like, growing up in the yakuza, at the tender age of eight.

Kai it would be then. He says a quiet prayer for both Oto and Kai, feeling somber now. Maybe Kogarashi would help him redeem himself. Maybe Kogarashi would be exactly what he’s looking for, and he can curse Hanzo, and then maybe, absolve himself of guilt.

He would have to start referring to himself as Kai. He needs this to be convincing, because he’s likely to stay in the city for a little while, few weeks or a month to wrack up some cash. Genji can’t assume that there’s anyone in the city that will uncurse Hanzo, he assumes he’s going to have to travel...could a boat even haul Hanzo’s new form across the ocean? Surely, cargo boats haul heavy things all the time, and he would have to pay extra for discretion…

The night sky falls around him like a heavy curtain, slamming around him before he can even notice. Hanzo’s still gone; he’ll eventually find his way back, Genji’s not too worried. He gazes up at the stars, ruminating on what to do. He’s high up enough that gaps between leaves are like peepholes to the heavens, stars speckling the sky like freckles in intermittent bursts of sparks as the leaves sway to an unfelt wind. Hanzo would have to be stored somewhere abandoned, but close enough to the forest he could hunt. Genji certainly couldn’t take a dragon into Kogarashi.

He’s restless and not at all tired, despite the vast amounts of slogging he did today. The forest is humming with the sounds of the night, mainly cicadas that chirp like a cacophony of symbols. Genji wants to wait up until Hanzo’s here - he would scare off anything that tries to eat his brother in the night.

Genji could always do what he did at home when he was restless, or had a lot of steam to blow off. It’s not like anyone is here, and if he’s completely honest, the thought of doing it in the wilderness...it makes his heart beat and his cock twitch in anticipation. It’s something he’s never done before, either alone or with someone else, but feeling that crisp night air brush against his cock...he wants to know what it feels like.

He hopes to god Hanzo won’t come back, finding his brother touching himself up in one of the trees like a horny animal. But Genji couldn’t help it, it had been so  _ long _ ,  _ too _ long, even back when he’d lived in Hanamura. The very night he’d woken up, he’d been thinking about sneaking out, but had a bad feeling. It had been a few weeks at that point.

Genji hastily rips open his gi. He can’t take all the time he wants; if he could, he’d tease himself, edge himself for hours until he  _ couldn’t _ anymore, bringing himself to the brink again and again until he was a slavering mess, horny and  _ needy _ in all the right ways. Hanzo  _ would  _ actually then come back to his brother being nothing more than a cock-hungry slut.

He doesn’t even need to think back to when he last snuck out, just the novelty of being thoroughly exposed like a slut is heating him up almost unbearably fast. Genji trails his hands down his sides, thighs, closing his eyes and biting his lip as he tugs on his left nipple. God it’s been so long, just being out in the open and dreaming about being teased...he’s already half hard.

The need to rush is hampering his excitement, but not for too long as he trails a hand down his stomach, stopping right at the thatch of hair before his cock. Hesitating, just the tiniest little bit, to make sure Hanzo isn’t actually anywhere nearby, he spits into his palm and grabs his cock, giving it the slowest stroke he could force himself to do.

He hisses at how good it feels. It’s not long before he’s fully hard, only a few strokes. He feels like a virgin again, so  _ sensitive _ that each stroke of his hand sends jolts of pleasure all over his body. Genji moans softly as he cups his heavy, throbbing cock in his hand, and almost shivers as the night air blows over it.

He wants to draw it out. He wants to be fucked, and fuck someone else.  _ That _ had been a fun night. He deliberately forces his hand to slow down, enjoying the torture as his cock whines for him to speed up. Genji wants to come so badly, but the anguish of not letting himself, of torturing himself with the pleasure, it’s so good it’s too good.

He licks his hand and curves it into an O and thrusts into it, squeezing it slightly each time the head pops through on the other side. Genji pants, trying desperately to keep quiet as he fucks his own hand as slowly as possible. He’s leaking precome everywhere already and he just wants to speed up, but not yet, not  _ yet _ , he isn’t ready to beg to come yet.

He plays with his nipple with his other hand, rolling it, flicking it, twisting it, imagining someone’s teeth making it their playtoy. His cock is flushed and hot, especially against the cold air, and his stomach is beaded with sweat. He  _ is _ a playtoy, just a little slut desperately needing someone else to toy with him, play with him however they want…

It’s getting to be too much. His head is hazy, foggy; all Genji can think about is how bad he wants to come. He’d beg for it, on his knees, if someone was toying with him. So desperate for release, he’d probably rub his cock on their leg like a horny dog, whining and begging to come. He makes the same O with his hand, but this time, he moans as he furiously strokes himself.

They’d make him beg for it, of course. He’s got to beg, and Genji finds himself whining slightly as he tries not to come. It feels too good, but a  good boy couldn’t get off without his master’s permission. 

He rubs his thumb along the head, along the slit, feeling how much precome he’s leaking. Almost sobbing now with how bad he wants to come, he takes the hand that was toying with his nipple and moves two fingers to his mouth. He sucks on it with wild abandon, imagining that it’s his master, making him suck him off before his pet could come.

Imagining the feeling of some guy’s come bursting into his mouth, forcing him to drink it all...he moans around his fingers, tightening his hand around his dick. Genji’s so pathetic, he just wants someone to step on his pathetic cock, come all over his face, fuck his ass like a little pet. He speeds up his stroking again and he moans, panting and flushed.

He fucks his mouth with his fingers, ignoring the saliva dripping down his chin. He imagines, finally, that he’s been a good boy. He gets praised, and told that he can come. Genji’s hips buck into his hand and a tear slips out of the corner of his eye as he finally winds tight and snaps like a piano wire.

His hand is still going as his cock twitches with each spurt; his fingers are torn from his mouth as he cries out, coming so hard his entire world explodes into white.

When he comes to, with wobbly arms he grabs some leaves to wipe himself off with, and refastens his outfit neatly. His ass is numb from sitting on a hard tree branch and his left thigh is cramping slightly, but at least now he feels like he can actually sleep.

He abruptly falls asleep, waking up briefly in the night to feel Hanzo draped around him like a blanket before eventually drifting back off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Dunks who has reviewed my fic yet again and just made my day. Thank you to everyone who reads this, leaves kudos, and gives all that good stuff. I'm flattered and it helps keep me going! It's been...maybe about five years since I wrote any sort of smut. I struggle to write it, but I promised myself when I wrote out the story for this fix I WOULD write it and force myself to conquer that! It's more of like, I always feel like it's unsexy, no matter how I write it. If it IS unsexy, I'm so sorry, I tried.
> 
> Today I have kind of a special thing, if anyone's interested: on Spotify, I have a playlist I've named 'Walking With Fire' which is what I use for writing WwF. I think I'm actually going to start putting what song I used to write this chapter, because I think it would be cool. It also helps set the mood I was in when writing this. I dunno, I always love it when authors do that stuff. I like seeing the thought process and stuff behind their works. The song Black Pearl by EXO-k was actually partially the inspiration for this fic, so, yup.
> 
> Then again, my music taste is kind of embarrassing. Well, if anyone wants to actually look for it, it's totally there on Spotify. It has an icon of Genji on it, because I'm lame.
> 
> The songs I listened to were Willow Tree by Twin Wild and Six Feet Under by The Weeknd, Willow Tree actually being a huge inspiration for this fic as well.


	10. Here At Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mountains are gone, leaving only the seascaped city in their wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Things are heating up, at least for one Shimada. Very mild mention of gore and erections, but really not much else.

When he next wakes up, the sun is just about to break like a yolk along the horizon, and Genji stretches. Hanzo is sleeping soundly curled up, end of his snout resting on Genji’s left knee and along his leg.

He strokes his snout idly, feeling the scales tingle across his fingers.

Genji’d had a dream last night, but he isn’t really quite sure what to make of it. It took place on a desolate moor, with the air heavy and thick with silence. The wind did not blow, but the earth shook beneath him, like the clattering of a thousand hooves. His mouth had been dry, cotton dry, but it didn’t matter to him at that moment.

The only other thing Genji could really remember other than the oppressive weight of dread and death on his doorstep was looking down and seeing mismatched hands.

Had they been his? He studies his hands now. Sure, he’s got a few scars, it comes with the territory of being an especially rambunctious child with a slyly rambunctious older brother who kept daring him to do stupid things. But no, his skintone matches perfectly, despite the thick white scars.

He curls them a few times, almost like he’s feeling them, making sure they’re attached. He must’ve been dreaming he was someone else at the time. Both his hands are matching and completely functional.

Hanzo is stirring, and Genji chuckles as he can tell it  _ still _ takes Hanzo a long time to rouse. At least now he doesn’t have to spend about an hour getting his hair  _ just right _ . It took Hanzo longer than it had any of the other women in the clan, and he was often the last one ready in the morning. Once he’d sealed himself in his room, it was game over.

Hanzo blinks sleepily, his second eyelids flickering over his half lidded eyes. Shaking his mane, he bumps his nose into Genji’s cheek.

“Ah,” Genji starts, as he notices something, “Open your mouth, Aniki, I think you have something stuck in your teeth.” And Hanzo, after a moment, does.

Genji’s greeted with long, thin, sharp teeth. His muzzle is long and narrow like most dragons in their area, but it still shocks to see them up close. They’re sharp, he knows, but he still wants to test a finger on one, just to see. He resists, and looks at the left back side of Hanzo’s jaw.

It’s a piece of deerskin, wedged just like Sojiro’s kimono had been, right in the back of Hanzo’s jawline. Saliva drips from the top teeth, and Genji hopes it’s not poisonous.

He shudders when he reaches in. This is too surreal. He doesn’t know how to feel, especially when he can feel how hot Hanzo’s mouth. The feelings in him clash, and his fingers twitch. He needs them to be steady, but…   


But  _ nothing _ . He snags the blooded deerskin out from between the teeth, tossing it aside. Breathing a little heavy, he pats Hanzo’s muzzle to signal him to close.

He looks down at his fingers. Mismatched hands overlay his in his mind’s eye.

For a minute, a second of time that seemed to stretch until the end of time…

He’d wanted Hanzo’s jaws to snap shut. He wanted them to close like a steel trap on his arm, like they did on Symmetra’s leg, like they did on Sojiro’s chest. He wanted Hanzo to rip his arm from the elbow down completely off, and somehow, he felt  _ thrilled _ at that prospect.

This is bad. This is extremely bad.

He tries to dismount from the tree, but his legs are stiff and locked up from sitting in a meditation pose all night. He falls out of the tree, just barely managing to catch himself at the last moment. Genji takes a moment to close his eyes, leaning heavily against the tree, and breathe.

In and out.

His brother is tame now. The potion worked, otherwise Genji wouldn’t have woken up completely in tact. So what is wrong with him? Did the potions in Symmetra’s hut change him when he knocked them over? 

Mismatched hands and the feeling of wanting to be dominated. He could write it off as lingering fantasies after last night. In fact, that’s exactly what he’d do.

But Genji ignores the fact he felt that pull before they even entered the hut. He felt that pull, that attraction, that need he just couldn’t find words for that brewed deep in his gut - he felt it when he first laid eyes on his brother in his new form. Maybe even earlier than that. He doesn’t know, he refuses to consider the possibility or thought.

Hanzo is taking his sweet time unwinding from above, likely trying not to get his delicate underbelly scales caught on the branches and twigs from the coniferous trees, and Genji is never more thankful and spiteful of his brother in this moment.

Hanzo’d always had great hair and a smile that were as rare as a harvest moon, but when Genji managed to wretch them out of his brother...his stomach would fall out the bottom of his feet. It was rarer than any jewel and more priceless than all the gold in the world. Empires would go to war over that smile, that kind of self-conscious smile on the elder brother’s face. Hanzo said it made his face look weird. Genji always thought it took a graceful, gorgeous statue and made him turn just a little bit more human.

He pants, willing his half-erection to go down. He could blame that on the morning and the fact that last night hadn’t been satisfying. It’s okay, he thinks to himself, it’s okay. It’s just the morning and the tension left over from that dream.

He curses today as Hanzo finally disentangles himself, landing so gracelessly, with such a heavy thud that the entire forest quiets.

But Genji can’t stop himself from looking down at them every once and awhile, covertly, during the trek. He’d made sure they were heading towards Kajiki, and thankfully, the mountain ridge was in a natural crescent shape that would lead right to Kogarashi.

He’d found a name for himself, at least. It’s a good name, and would serve him well.

Taking stock of what he has in the inrou, he’d have just enough to make it to Kogarashi, if he’s lucky. His diet has been sparse, so he looks forward to a hot, rich meal and a nice bath. But once he gets there, he knows he needs to find work. The best way to get off this island would be to take a private ship - a  _ very _ sturdy one piloted by a  _ very _ discreet captain - and ferry both of them to...wherever Overwatch is.

From there, there’s hopefully people that can uncurse Hanzo, maybe even cast spells of good luck upon them both. That would be nice, given all the misfortune they’ve been given. The karma for killing Sojiro must’ve been extremely bad...although, Genji can see why, as the act of cold blooded patricide most likely doesn’t hold very much good karma in it.

He can’t wait to be out of the wilderness. So many bugs, too much mud, not enough hot baths and hot food and hot women. Kogarashi would likely be nice for that, too, being the seascaped city it is.

The days pass quickly enough, though. Genji’s down to his last few bits of fish, resembling really nothing more than flakes and some dust sticking to the corners of the inrou. Hanzo had made regular hunting trips. Genji starts to talk to Hanzo during the trip, telling him all sorts of stories from when he went outside their castle.

He doesn’t go into any sort of graphic detail, but he can tell that Hanzo is drinking in every word. It’s a way to pass the time and alleviate the boredom, as while the wilderness certainly is novel in a way, it wears off and Genji realizes he’s definitely much more of a city boy.

Hanzo had never really been told by Genji his many mischievous escapades. He had all sorts of stories, varying from trysts to running odd night jobs to even pickpocketing. He hadn’t needed to steal any of the things, and he hadn’t even meant to, but just like the life threads...he took them anyways.

The souvenirs were probably still in his room, collecting dust in a drawer in his vanity. Genji really hadn’t meant to take them, he says again, as Hanzo gives him a stern look. But...he took them anyways because…

They felt like freedom. They were examples that there was life beyond castle. They symbolized not only his ability to get away with things, but also of his rebellion, of him choosing his own life, of the  _ beyond _ . Just like the stars, Genji had been fascinated of what was out of the tiny scope of the castle, even while his brother desired nothing more than to stay put.

Genji had always wanted to show Hanzo the life outside of their family’s domain. But to Hanzo, he’d explained long ago, that the family felt like the sunrise: it existed each day without fail, indomitable and unstoppable, and it’s rays and eyes extended over every surface until everything and everyone was eclipsed by its overwhelming brightness. The clan to Hanzo was an indisputable truth and an absolute one at that. Genji’d agreed, but then said, even with the sunrise, there will always be pockets of shadow.

Hanzo hadn’t really said anything at the time, but he knew his brother was thinking it over, mulling it like rice being chaffed in a mill. He would find the grains of truth hidden within the hulls, given his own time. It wasn’t that Hanzo wasn’t smart, but he had always been calculating like that. Where life-changing decisions took Genji a mere second, Hanzo would consider it from every angle, detached and removed from the situation.

His brother is brilliant, both in smarts and as a tactician. He would’ve run the clan so well, brought it up from its shambling state to being an empire worth more than anything else on the face of the planet.

And yet, Genji is relieved that his brother wasn’t forced into that fate, whether he thought he wanted it or not. Hanzo is so great, so magnificent, that he should be allowed the simple gift of choice that he was never truly given in the past.

Their father had to die, and Genji wasn’t grateful for that, but he did think that this is Hanzo’s chance to experience that life beyond the walls of the Shimada castle. Genji tries, too, to look at this as a journey to broaden his horizons - it makes the ever encroaching inevitability of his brother possibly being lost to him forever just a little bit more bearable.

The ridges of the mountain, once proud and jagged like the spine of an elephant now curve and are smoothed down into the earth, emulsifying until they are almost entirely gone.

Out across them now spreads a gently sloped one-sided valley, nestled in its bosom between the grass and the sea lies Kogarashi. Natural clefts in the hillside from the shifting earthen plates make Kogarashi accessible even for those not coming the mountainous, terrible way they came.

Along the inside of the hill, Genji can make out some farms on terraces, carved into the gentle hillside. Despite the high amount of traffic for Kogarashi, there are some people that live there full-time, trying to ride off the coattails of the profitable trade route right on their doorstep.

Behind them lies the forest, expansive and pitch black and dense. It would actually be a good place for Hanzo to stay, Genji thinks, as there would be plenty wild game for his brother to eat. Hanzo would be hidden here, far enough from the sprawling city to keep prying eyes away, but close enough that Genji could probably hoof it in a day from Kogarashi to here.

“Aniki,” He calls softly, forcing himself not to flinch when that massive head swings towards him after a moment. The thought is raw and fresh in his brain, the tug rich and thick in his gut. He swallows, fingers twitching slightly as he reaches out for that maw. Hanzo nuzzles his hand affectionately. “This is where I have to leave you.”

Hanzo blinks once, and Genji notices he looks slightly deflated. “Aniki, you can’t fly. I have to stay in Kogarashi, pick up some work, so that we can go...wherever we need to go. The shurikens won’t be enough.” He brings himself closer to Hanzo, despite having wanted to pull away. “I’ll come visit you, I promise,” He whispers, planting a kiss on his brother’s muzzle.

He starts walking towards the ridge of the hill, feeling a mixture of excitement, weariness, and most of all, a dread in his gut that won’t subside until Hanzo is long out of sight, but not out of mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always for reading, commenting, kudoing, giving this fic some love! Whew, I managed to get this chapter out quickly. I really just wanted to be done and in Kogarashi already!!
> 
> Song for this chapter was Suraj Hua Maddham which is beautiful and over the top and everything I need in my life. I'm a huge bollywood fan, actually.
> 
> I also wanted to note: I will be changing the tags on this story as I see fit. Some parts of the story later on I've been revising as I go. There are a lot of ideas that have been scrapped as I kind of let the story write itself with just a main overarcing plot and timeline I have. Thus, don't be surprised if you see tags changing. It's mostly minor stuff, not anything that is super important. One of the things that was scrapped was last chapter was supposed to be also a scene of Genji giving Hanzo a handjob...it didn't happen, because I want to keep building that tension. I should probably put a slowburn tag on this fic...


End file.
